REMOTE CONTROL
Brian Donaldson ponders the sad state of American and British dramas.
So British dramas don't hold a candle to their American counterparts, huh? We may have taken this as read for years but could a seismic shift be happening. Not that our home-grown shows are lifting theinsel\./es up to a higher plane. but our pals across the pond are going through a dip. The gaps left by The li/est l/l/ing and SIX Feet Under are larger than first anticipated and won't be helped when Tony Soprano finally has his moment With the fishes later this year.
And they Just can't guite get a spooky series to hold a light to the X Files. and the latest travesty of that ilk is The Lost Room rSky One, l”‘~/eo’ 24 Jan, 9pm .0 i which appears
to unite the dream team of SFU's Peter Krause and ER's Julianne Margulies but is hopeless in the extreme. He plays Joe Miller. a cop whosedaughter is trapped in ‘the lost room' which eXists in some black pocket but there' and which can be accessed by a key. Everyone is after this object but Miller's torment is only heightened by some appalling scenes. dreadful dialogue and failed comic interludes.
Far more reliable is Jack Bauer. who's back with season six of 24 Sky One. Sun 2] Jan, 9pm 0... i. You might think that it will take him all day to get rid of that beard which makes him look like the soundcheck guy for Grandaddy. but he has other concerns on his mind. Such as how he will escape from his Chinese captors who remain miffed that he was involved in the death of one of their agents on US soil while Jack was trying to save the world from biological obliteration or
something. A scary ten~minute preguel was all Sky One was Willing to send out while they tried to track down the DVD which has been used to leak the first four episodes onto the net. The appetite is duly whetted.
Unfortunately. Prison Break (Five. Mon 22 Jan. 70pm 0.. i has
contracted Lost disease. and looks like being another series that Just
didn't know when to stop. One season might well have been enough. With the cons now on the loose and racing to get away from the various agencies igood and bad, in hot pursuit. Repetitive storylines and the desperate hunt for the perfect cliffhanger might be this shows worst enemies.
Down the UK way. Robert Lindsay’s political journey from Tooting revolutionary to New Labour PM Via his GBH 'Derek Hatton' figure is complete with The Trial of Tony Blair (Channel ‘1. Thu 78Jan. 100m 0. i as we speculate on our beloved leader being charged With war crimes. Again. it's unclear whether this
is being pitched as slapstick comedy or psychological horror but the debate is over when Peter Multan totters in as a fiiiger—(:hev./iiig indecisive Gordon Brown.
The short series of hour-long daily dramas in The Afternoon Play (BBC I, Mon 22 Jan, 2.05pm 00. ) kicks off amiany enough with Greta Scacchi coming over all dowdy to help out a young stud whose acting talent
Review
COMEDY COMEDY CUTS ITV2, Thu 18 Jan, 10.55pm 000
Some people hold the view that since the demise of The Tube, TV’s commissioning heads haven’t really taken live music seriously. Well, what of live comedy then? Apart from the Stand-Up Show, Scotland’s Live Floor Show, and the odd bonanza on Paramount, there’s barely been a regular vehicle for aspiring stand-ups on the circuit who aren’t close buddies of Jack Dee. And yet here comes little old ITV2, the place where 805 American movies, Emmerdale repeats and Judge Judy go to die, giving the young comics of the land a golden opportunity to air their wares.
The format here is that the comics do some quickfire snippets of their material, not upon the stand-up stage but in any mocked-up situation that the directorial likes of Stewart Lee, John Gordillo and Cal McCrystal have deemed appropriate. So, we get Katy Brand talking to some zoo animals about relationships, Mark Watson talking to us in a park about army recruitment adverts, Brendon Burns lifting weights and pondering the future of Down’s Syndrome and Howard Read telling his animated pal Little Howard a disturbing bedtime story.
The nature of this particular beast is that there are as many misses as there are hits (the semi-nude balletics of Spymonkey and the cul de sac ramblings of Josie Long are the obvious downsides) but where else on TV will you see Phil Nichol recreating his classic skit about simulating rough sex with his girlfriend’s elderly Irish father? Nowhere, that’s where. (Brian Donaldson)
emotional Five Days 11380 ’. Tue .‘12‘
Jan. 9pm 0... t when a young mum goes missing. and tingeztl aie pointed in a host of diffeien: directions. It's as close as we're ever gomg to get to a UK 2/1.
is stunted by the fact he can't read. The heartstrings might have been pulled tighter had this been trimmed by half an hour. leaving y0u less time to await the inevitable happy ending. A pleasing denouerneiit is surer not on the cards in the tense and highly
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