TV
highlights
Full Circle With Michael
Palin BBCl, Sun 31 Aug, 8pm.
The intrepid explorer who takes a camera crew on his travels, returns to the trail with what's pitched as his most ambitious j0urney to date. From the Russian Far East to California via Australia, Palin covers 50,000 miles on a trip that took two-and-a-half years to realise and featured adventures of a kind you won’t encounter on a package holiday to Tenerife.
Film 97 With Barry Norman BBCl, Mon 1 Sep, 11.20pm.
Bazza returns wrth his usual mixture of bon mots and badmouthing for the new season of the film review programme. This week, our be- i’umpered friend gives his ten bob’s worth on Mrs Brown, starring Billy Connolly and Judi Dench, Conspiracy Theory starring Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts and more.
Short Stories: Making Fortunes Channel 4, Mon 1 Sep, 8.30pm.
The quirky documentary strand gazes through the doors of Scotland's only psychic centre, and discovers that far from being born Wllh second sight, the employees of this particular establishment are taken on as raw recruits from local jOb centres and initiated in the art of tarot reading.
Too Much Too Young: Chickens
Channel 4, Mon 1 Sep, llpm.
The documentary series that delves into the darker aspects of youth culture, focuses on the lives of DaVid and Kammy, two rent boys operating from parks and public t0ilets in Glasgow, where up to 70 boys eke out a liVing in the same way.
Jonathan Miller's Opera Works: The Ensemble
BBCZ, Mon 1 Sep, THSpm.
New six-part series that aims to do a
Pavarotti by demystifying opera and making it accessible to an audience
who would never dream of setting foot inside an opera house. Running the show is renowned opera director Jonathan Miller.
Paul Merton In Galton And Simpson's . . . Visting Day
Scottish, Tue 2 Sep, 8.30pm.
The dry wit returns to the screen in a new series reinterpreting classic comedy sketches with himself as the star. This week sees Paul trapped in his hospital bed with a broken leg, making him a sitting target for the unwanted attentions of his visiting parents.
The X-Files BBCl,Wed 3 Sep, 9.30pm-
Another batch of spooky cases arrive on the desks of FBI agents Mulder and Scully, as the brilliant sci-fi drama returns for another series. In a story continuing from last series, Mulder is in search of a cure for his stroke-ridden mother at the hands of the Gentle- Looking Man.
Infamous Addresses Channel 4, Wed 3 Sep, 11.40pm.
Unasharnedly voyeuristic documentary that visits six horror houses and talks to the people who live there Properties looked at include the Site of 10 Rillington Place where John Christie murdered eight women, and Leopold Road, where John Haig became the acid bath killer.
10 X 10: Rat Women . BBCZ, Thu 4 Sep, 10.15pm.
Ten new filmmakers make their directing debut with this new series of the mowe shorts programme Getting the cameras rolling is Minkie Spiro, whose intriguing debut film looks at women With a passion for rats. And we do mean the small furry kind.
Name That Tune Channel 4, Fri 5 Sep, 7pm.
More cynical inutterings and tinkling of ivories from our old mucker Jools Holland, as he hosts this new series which is baSically a revamped version of the claSSic music gtiiz show, Naming that tune Will be a team of three Vinyl lUllleS, whose samples Will c.0me courtesy of Jools's Rhythm Arid Blues
Orchestra
Michael Palin returns to the trail in Full Circle
74 THE “ST 2‘) Aug- ll Sep 199/
With Michael Palin, BBC1, Sun 31 Aug, 8pm
Nights Out At The Empire Channel 4, Sat 30 Aug, 11.30pm.
Filming houseflies laying eggs in Outer
Junior Simpson
Mongolia is one thing, sticking a
camera in the direction of people getting on stage and attempting to make a name for themselves is quite another. This is the range of Cafe
Productions, whose new six part series Hackney Empire making a few dreams.
Nights Out At The Empire shows and creating horrible nightmares for
relatively untried singers, dancers and stand-ups, including some as young
as eleven.
'When I was that age I was playing kiss-chase. It’s scary,’ insists your genial
host Junior Simpson, a wave-maker on
this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. Most of
the acts appearing on the show are black. begging the obvious question - is there a black comedic aesthetic at work here?
‘At the moment, the audiences are predominantly white or black, unless you are Thea Vidale or Lenny Henry,’ says Simpson. 'Yet for myself, I find that the set I do in front of a black audience isn’t that much different from
what I do for a white audience.’ Both white and black will be rolling in
their aisles and sitting-rooms,
getting acquainted to names such as Richard Blackwood, Terry Alderton,
Roger Dee. Marcus Powell and believe i (Brian Donaldson)
t or not, Felicity Ethnic.
radio
highlights
The Essential Mix Radio 1, Sat 30 Aug, 2am.
Two solid hours in the mix With Chicago’s legendary Felix Da Housecat -— the hard-working, label-running international DJ known to his more enthUSiastic fans as the Hendrix Of House
I'll Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive Radio 2, Sat 30 Aug, 10pm-
Van the man Morrison makes a rare excursion into presenting With this 80th birthday tribute to his good friend John Lee Hooker Intervrewed in his California home the bluesman talks about his life and gives listeners a sneak preView of his latest song, the as yet unrecorded House Of Angels
The Day I Didn't Die Radio Scotland, Mon 1 Sep, 6.40pm.
New series in which people who’ve had a close encounter \‘i/Illi death describe their ordeal, and how it has
changed their lives. First is DaVid Farquhar from Fintry, who fell six hundred feet from a mountain in Glencoe and lived to tell the tale.
Saturday Playhouse Radio 4, Sat 6 Sep, 2.30pm.
Miranda Richardson, Kevui Whately, Jack Davenport (Miles in This Life) and Douglas Hodge star in this week’s Saturday Playhouse 'The Airmen Who Would Not Die’, a true story concerning the tragic events surrounding the crash of the airship
; R101 in193o
? Fi Sci i Radio 4, Tue 9 Sep, 2pm.
In the final programme of the science fiction series, contemporary novelists have their say. Steve Jones chats to Booker Prize-Winning author AS. Byatt about why she uses science in
3 her SlOTIOS, Philip Kerr, author of
bestseller Gridiron, talks about the fine line between fiction that uses sCience and sci-fi proper, while Dr
Jonathan Miller and evolutionary
: biologist Stephen Jay Gould question ; whether science should come into the modern novel at all.
(Ellie Carr)