Television Can Blow Me

By JAMES DONAGHY

As television descends ever further into a bacchanalian orgy of industry gladhanding, ass kissing and nut guzzling, Aerial Telly is the one website you can rely upon to call it exactly how it is.

More hopelessly corrupt TV critics were spotted lunching with worthless TV talent Chernobyls than ever before in 2011 and the shamelessly compromised hacks who return half-cut to their soulless showhomes to write their fluff pieces before hour-long self-harm sessions under the ivory spooge of fluorescent strip lighting cut a sorry ass sight.

Television Can Blow Me is the antidote - the best of Aerial Telly. A man of jungle intensity and anthracite integrity fearlessly bringing it however, wherever, to whoever he likes.

About James Donaghy

James has been writing professionally about TV since 2006. He has written for the Guardian, Project, Front, House, Arena and Vanity Fair Italia. He lives and works in Birmingham.

Acknowledgements

A massive thank you to Mhairi McFarlane, Andy Conway and Justin Quirk and for reading through the text. Suggestions such as “hyphenate fuck face” were invaluable and have been implemented in full.

Cover by Peter Bradbury at Digit64.

Introduction

When I started Aerial Telly in 2003 television review websites were a big pile of poop. Of course you had Television Without Pity with its snarky recaps and teeming forums but beyond that pickings among the one-man band blogs were decidedly turdly. There didn't seem to be anybody reacting to TV as if they had just watched it, still brain-fried by the brilliance or stupidity of what they had just seen.

For reasons I still can't fathom, every internet douche wanted to give a balanced report, take everything into account, stroke their chins and say “well that was a somewhat disappointing programme which nonetheless had some promising elements”.

They sounded like they were auditioning for a feature writing gig on their local paper. The writing was turgid, the views soporific and a decidedly pussy claat air of wanting to be everyone's mate prevailed. Wasn't the whole point of self-publishing to say what you like, not become a pale repetition of the party line?

I'd seen something similar with football fanzines. There was a time when they were a joy - subversive, profane, written on a shitty typewriter with half the keys missing, photocopied onto pink paper, packed with humour and they resembled something that you might find in a football fan's brain. Then When Saturday Comes came along and all a sudden everybody wanted to discuss formations, tactics and the Premier League’s finances. The sound of air slowly hissing out of a balloon could be heard. The squares had won.

So I wanted to do something that actually reflected how I felt about TV as a fan. Never knowingly reasonable or balanced - it would be a broadside, a polemic, a from-the-gut expression of how you feel in the immediate aftermath of a TV show. If you love it, it's the best thing in history; hate it, and everyone in the cast needs decapitating. Thus began Aerial Telly.

After an enjoyable few years dispensing bear hugs and bitch slaps, Arena magazine got in touch and offered me work. Soon afterwards The Guardian followed suit and I somehow found myself writing about TV for a living. Aerial Telly continued, twice-weekly as usual, talking the same smack it always had. It was a place I could say the things I couldn't say at grown-up publications like The Guardian where they have to worry about things like house style, relationships with TV networks and common decency. Aerial Telly, needless to say, never worries about any of that.

And now you hold in your digital hands the definitive digest of the eight inglorious years of Aerial Telly. Read it, cherish it and be aware that nothing you read is necessarily how it is but rather speaks a deeper truth of how I felt at the time.

In the end isn't that all any of us can do?

James Donaghy, July 2011

CONTENTS

Celebriteed squares: piss gargling fuckmonkeys who poison TV, society and life itself

- The Delicious Miss Dahl

- Celebrity Big Brother 2010 - Vinnie Jones can drink mares’ piss

- I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here 2009

- Jordan and Peter: Marriage and Mayhem

- Love skunk Vernon Kay sprays his rat jism in the general direction of Skank Central. Misses.

- Mary Archer - My Life with Jeffrey

- Preston’s Walk Out on Never Mind The Buzzcocks

Sport on TV: pundits, commentaturds and their filthy lies

- The World Cup has been kidnapped and molested by blowhard shitsacks who don’t care about football, tradition or noise pollution

- World Cup Final 2010

- The Contender

- Euro 2008 TV coverage

- Listen up, douchebags: Larry Merchant KO1 murdering rapist hype merchant scum that constitute boxing’s deal-making fight-avoiding turd elite

- 606 with Danny Baker

Gong intermission:

- Aerial Telly Awards 2006

Documentary tards: deviants, wackjobs and Peaches Geldof

- My Penis and I

- Fix My Fat Head

- Guys And Dolls

- Cutting Edge: My Kid’s Psychic

- Inside Waco

- Old Enough To Be His Mother

- Seduction School

- My Friend Michael Jackson

- Take That... for the Record

- When Fearne Met Peaches

British drama: can you handle the Loof?

- Worried About the Boy

- This Is England '86

- Luther

- Luther finale

- Sherlock

- Sherlock finale: The Great Game

- EastEnders

- Skins Series 2

Gong intermission:

- Aerial Telly Awards 2007

Reality isn’t real: reality TV and the scum sucking rat bastards who participate

- Britain’s Got Talent 2010

- Britain’s Got Talent Final 2009

- The Apprentice Series 2

- Big Brother 2008

- Big Brother 2008: Stuart tapped the compassion vending machine and it toppled over on top of him

- X-Factor 2005

- X Factor 2008 - sob stories bring misery to millions

Gong intermission:

- Aerial Telly Awards 2008

British comedy: the highs and lows and why it blows

- My Family: Reloaded

- The Persuasionists

- Extras Christmas special

- PhoneShop

- No Heroics

- The Thick of It Series 3

- Saxondale

Gong intermission:

- Aerial Telly Awards 2009

American drama: torturers, serial killers and other good guys

- 24 Season 4

- 24 series finale

- Dexter Season 4 finale

- Harper's Island

- Lost Season 3 finale

- Lost series finale

- Mad Men

- Mad Men Season 2

- Prison Break Season 2 Premiere

- Spartacus: Blood and Sand Season 1 finale “Kill Them All”

- True Blood Season 2 finale

Gong intermission:

- Aerial Telly Awards 2010

Sci-fi: how the Cylons reinvented television

- Battlestar Galactica Season 3

- Castrating Galactica - why Faceman needs to can it

- FlashForward midseason report

- Paradox

- Doctor Who Series 5 premiere

- Doctor Who - Vincent and The Doctor

...and finally

- “Ah fuck it - the cunt bit me” - a Steve Irwin tribute

Celebriteed squares: piss gargling fuckmonkeys who poison TV, society and life itself

It's apparent to everyone that celebrities are worthless piece of shit who don't deserve to live but to say this is to miss the point. It's the very process of celebrity that degrades us all. It turns normals into craven idiots desperate for validation and turns celebrities into entitled shits, convinced that everything they do, say and think matters.

And we should pity them. Nobody treats them like a human being anymore. Otherwise decent withhold common courtesies, their private lives are picked over like a carcass by cruel buzzards and everyone thinks it's fine to laugh at their failings, misfortunes and stupid, stupid TV shows.

So this is me, pitying them - until they are ash.

The Delicious Miss Dahl

Nigella Lawson was the worst columnist you ever read but stick her in a red top and blowsy skirt talking about her gravy and all of a sudden she's Madam Sex: Queen of Cock and Kitchen. Previously best known for having a famous granddad and marrying a foetus, Sophie Dahl now has her own cookery show The Delicious Miss Dahl which owes rather a lot to Lawson's sexy-posh-girl-in-the-kitchen trailblazing. Who knew the granddaughter of a best-selling author and daughter of a Chancellor of the Exchequer could succeed in the media?

Sophie puts it on the line early on. “I like honest, straightforward food” as opposed to all that dishonest slick talking food we've been eating all this time. It's a cute way of making a virtue out of necessity. She cooks simple because she's not that good at it. She's essentially saying “I can't cook but I am sexually attractive”. It's good that we get this out of the way so quickly.

The shows are mood based and the first is Shellfish, sorry, Selfish. “The perfect selfish day would have to begin with breakfast because it's my favourite meal” she says. Yes, and also because it's the first meal of the day, Sophs. The perfect “fucking your dwarf husband with a strap-on” day would also have to begin with breakfast. It's kind of a thing.

She goes to a cheese shop to get the perfect indulgent cheese for lunch. She finds buffalo mozzarella. “I actually fantasise about this cheese” she coyly confides. You may fantasise about it, doll, but you don't eat it. And in the remainder of your fantasies I imagine pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars and green clovers play a central role.

Like all models she is a laughable narcissist. “In my time I have been as round as a Reubens and also a little slip shadow of a creature” Yeah, like anyone gives a fuck you've gone through a couple of dress sizes. She makes a peanut butter fudge so loaded with calories that if you set it alight it would burn for months like a Californian forest fire. Yet a look at her pinched face and skinny wrists confirms that Sophs last saw a carbohydrate around the time of the Incas.

She drops in little anecdotes like the one about the eight-year-old boy called Bertram eating sushi at one of her book signings. She wanted to be his friend but he disappeared off into the ether. Track the smug little bastard down - he'll probably get its own show, Bertram on Sushi.

I spent some time watching this trying to place who Sophie Dahl reminds me of and it's Rita from Arrested Development. Played by Charlize Theron, she was Michael's beautiful but special needsy English girlfriend. Blinded by her beauty and English accent, Michael only realises she's a 'tard when he's played a video of her eating some plastic fruit. Don't be surprised if there's similar footage of Sophie on a cutting room floor somewhere.

Sophie comes out with some bizarre stuff. She is quite possibly crackers. She seems a nice enough lass. The food, for what it's worth, is fine. Edie Brickell, Emiliana Torrini and Nouvelle Vague soundtrack this bizarre little magical mystery tour around her mind. She's away with the fairies, this one. On a starvation diet in real life yet living an alternate reality in front of the cameras where she hogs out on expensive dairy product, kettle chips and chocolate.

I didn't mind this, actually.

The verdict on The Delicious Miss Dahl: You've seen worse.

Marks out of 10: 7

Celebrity Big Brother 2010 - Vinnie Jones can drink mares' piss

Bullyboy thug, man-of-the-people shitbird fraud, nose biting suicide contemplating one trick pit pony Vinnie Jones spent the first two weeks of Celebrity Big Brother being the surly, menacing, unpleasant twunt you always knew he would be - picking on poor old Alex Reid's insecurities, giving it the wise man of Hollywood bit and using the kitchen as his own personal fiefdom. This, combined with his homespun charm and winning grin^1, eased him into favourite in the betting. So far so blehh. But this week the lovable rogue mask slipped and revealed an exposed arse, leaving him looking rather like the Vibrating Bum-Faced Goats from Viz.

It started when Vinnie heard the drunk as a skunk cornball Sisqo CHATTING SHIT about him. By which we mean expressing the valid opinion that their residence had become “Vinnie's playhouse” and that Jones might not be the greatest man who ever lived. Incensed by this savage attack, Jones burst into the diary room, rulebook in hand and demanded Big Brother take action. Sisqo was offending him and worst of all, his faaaaaamily. Say what?

The moment anybody mentions their family in these situations you know they are a piece of shit. It's the classic calling card of any thug before an act of violence to say he's doing it not frimself but por familia. In a hilarious diary room meltdown he told Big Brother that he would be hearing from his solicitor. Come again, Vinnie? I thought hard men didn't snitch?

When speaking to other housemates he said, “If the cameras weren’t on that'd have been sorted out last night” implying that he could beat up the 3 foot tall Thong Song man. He felt like throwing him “through a window” he told them. Wow, you're hard Vinnie. Sisqo isn't the toughest guy in the world. He isn't even the toughest guy in Dru Hill (that honour going naturally to Nokio the N-Tity)

It was a turning point for the turd who has been drifting in the betting ever since and even sweeter is that his favourite fish-in-a-barrel target practice Alex Reid, who Jones is plainly convinced cannot win, is the new favourite. It would be a fine way for the final Celebrity Big Brother series to end if Jones could watch himself beaten by somebody hated just three weeks previous, someone clearly pussywhipped to within an inch of his life by salmon pink freakshow Katie Price but someone essentially decent and quite good fun.

So Aerial Telly is backing the Reidernator. He feels it is the choice of the righteous.

1 Winning in the sense of winning a prize in a raffle and discovering it's a broken travel iron with a handle smeared with shit.

I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here 2009

Say what you like about Big Brother at least it provides different varieties of tedium. They vary the tasks, switch things up, have fun with them. And every now and again it produces something brilliant. The Box task, the Electrocution task, the Wedding task - all inspired in their own ways providing moments of slapstick, pathos and emotional sadism for our entertainment. But as I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here enters its 9000th year it still relies primarily on our primal fear of creepy crawlies. Spiders, locusts, maggots, dung beetles, Christopher Biggins - they’re all here and you’d better get used to it. Because if you don’t like watching a minor celebrity pulling cockroaches out of her shorts then you’re fucked.

I’m calling this now: I’m A Celebrity is done. I’m as over it as it’s possible for a boy to be. Over it, under it, through it - the very mention of it depresses me. I cannot watch Katie Price get covered in wasp mucus again; I don’t want to see another Hollyoaks actress crying into her sleeping bag; I don’t want to see the 1984 Superstars Champion being thrown out of a helicopter; I don’t want to see kangaroo spunk drool from the mouth of Paul Burrell as he noshes on Skippy’s balls; I don’t want to see Darren Day’s Frank Spencer; I don’t want to see Dean Gaffney ever; I don’t want to see a fake pair of tits smeared with fish guts, tits that come complete with the implicit notion that I should enjoy the schadenfreude while I can because, you know, glamour models and fish guts - it doesn’t happen every day.

Do they ever imagine that there might be reason it doesn’t happen every day? Unlikely. I’m A Celebrity producers are not a complicated bunch. Getting celebrities to sign up for the show is their biggest challenge and this is a particularly brutal year. If you’ve appeared in the paper in the past three years then you’re probably too famous. There’s her who used to be in Eastenders, him from Hollyoaks, that gay design couple, someone who was in a band and Jimmy White. He was last famous when snooker was fashionable, before your Internets and your mobile phones. It’s pitiful.

Ant and Dec present in the exact same tone they always have and that’s fine as far as it goes but it can’t save this dog of a show from the knacker’s yard. Totally bereft of ideas, irredeemably dull and hopelessly fixated on animal’s cocks, it is as broken as the careers of its participants. In the name of all that is holy, end this nonsense now.

The verdict on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here 2009: Enough.

Marks out of 10: 3

Jordan and Peter: Marriage and Mayhem

Around the time Jordan was confirmed to be entering the jungle for I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here you couldn’t move in the quality press for people lauding her arrival like it was the chance to show our finest unacknowledged business genius to the world. “A consummate businesswoman” said The Guardian; “a natural beauty, imbued with empathy, humour, maturity, brains and charisma” wrote The Independent on Sunday, “a 21st-century goddess” said lovely Victoria Coren.

“Ooh, you’ll see” the received wisdom went, “She’ll surprise a lot of people. She’s going to show what a classy, sassy business laydeh she is. She’s NOBODY’S fool and HIGHLY intelligent.”

When the time came, of course, she spent her whole time hiking her knickers out of her arse and scratching her tits. This must have been a huge disappointment for the broadsheet columnists who were apparently expecting a cross between Indira Gandhi and Bill Gates.

Let’s get this straight about Jordan. She paid thousands to get a load of shit stuck in her tits and become a grotesque parody of femininity that men would want to wank over. She then fucked a load of celebrity turds, one of whom pumped his defective sperm deep into her belly and gave her spawn. She then fucked the brains out of stammering Pop Idol loser G-Gareth G-G-Gates while six months pregnant - a fact he understandably denied for some time.

None of the above makes her a Harvard MBA, or Joan of Arc or even Linda Lusardi. Her success means her agent knew the right asking price for photographs of her ridiculous motionless tits. That is all.

And now she’s cashing in on her relationship with Peter Andre by making Jordan and Peter: Marriage And Mayhem a warts-and-all fly-on-the-wall. Nothing wrong with that just, please, no more of that “shrewd businesswoman” shite.

Intriguingly voice-overed by Janine from EastEnders the show apparently gets an access all areas pass into the lives of Peter and Katie. It seems to act chiefly as the vehicle for Jordan’s patented checkout girl candour. She helpfully tells Andre “I’ve told them - you didn’t always shoot in me all the time” while explaining her pregnancy to the camera.

Katie’s make-up artist tells how she enters his room as Katie and he magically transforms her into Jordan. Throughout the show people talk about the Jordan character as if it was some magnificent Peter Sellers creation. How could two such different people co-exist in the same body? No matter that the engaging vacuous tramp Katie is indistinguishable from the engaging vacuous tramp Jordan.

There’s loving footage of Harvey the fat, blind, diabetic son of misunderstood serial shagger Dwight “so good they named him Dwight” Yorke. Peter plays well with Harvey which is more than Dwight ever did so good for him.

We are treated to a unique insight into Jordan’s obstetrics. Things go well until shortly before the delivery when it appears there’s a membrane above the cervix that isn’t shifting like it ought to. You wonder briefly if this will slip into Bodies territory but an emergency c-section does the job.

Jordan gives the 411 on post-natal care. “They wash my fanny, put a catheter in it. I won’t tell Pete, and I’ll say to him “Pete, do you fancy some?” And I’ll pull the covers off and he’ll see the bag there!” Cue: much cackling laughter.

It’s not all laffs though as Jordan’s sciatica has forced a lull in their love life during her pregnancy. “He just got a suck and a feel of the bollocks” she explains. Well, marriage is all about compromise.

In any event, Katie is on top of it. Her legendary business acumen will no doubt see her ousting Sir Alan Sugar as The Apprentice guv’nor for the third series. Don’t think her agent hasn’t already made the move.

The verdict on Jordan and Peter: Marriage And Mayhem: You had Burton and Taylor and we get this?

Marks out of 10: 5

Love skunk Vernon Kay sprays his rat jism in the general direction of Skank Central. Misses.

Many, many men want to live the glamorous poonhound lifestyle of Aerial Telly yet how many have the intestinal fortitude? How many can take on board that it actually requires more temperance, more discipline, more diligence than a regular “life” style? They want to “be” the “man” but can they make the sacrifices necessary for this act of social magick to occur? The feck they can. For that reason Vernon Kay will spend tonight alone in the spare room, his gigantic bare feet sticking incongruously over the edge of his single bed, eating cold macaroni cheese straight from the tin with one hand, comfort masturbating with the other, crying like a girl guide, periodically scrubbing himself with bleach, howling “why???? why????”

Oh, it seemed like such a good idea to have text-sex with five different women. After all, who would ever find out? After all, glamour models are notoriously reluctant to share details of their private lives with the press, particularly if it involves someone in the public eye. You just got unlucky, Vern. THIS COULD NOT HAVE BEEN PREDICTED.

Perhaps the most humiliating thing of all here is the tragically feeble nature of the infidelity. Kay claims not to have banged any of these broads and I, for one, believe him. It's just that weak. If you're going to be plastered over every tabloid, have your every movement pored over you surely want to have had some compensatory ass, that oh-so-sweet mistake you mentally conjure up during those macaroni jerk off sessions. Instead he has to make do with “omg my twot iz about 2 explode” and “cya babes, hubby back”

“Vernon Kay brands himself 'STUPID'” the headline ran today and you wondered if the chump had actually gone ahead with a branding iron and permanently marked himself with the unpalatable truth everything he says and does already screams. Not so, it transpired and it's probably just as well. You imagine him getting the iron the wrong way round and ending up with DIPUTS permanently embedded in his forehead. And although those death rumours were wide of the mark, if he gets caught out like this again, he may be wishing he was dead.

It is a stark cautionary tale. People should know by now not to play with those club skanks and not attempt to emulate Aerial Telly. You only get a cauliflower arse, a face full of cum, post-traumatic stress disorder and the kind of shakes that make Judy Finnigan look like Mount Rushmore.

Mary Archer - My Life with Jeffrey

“Who you gonna believe - me or your own eyes?” - Chico Marx

Like all gangsters’ molls, Mary Archer has one eye on her man, another on her social standing. Whenever presented with the numerous misdemeanours of her husband she reacts with snotty condescension - unable or unwilling to acknowledge any wrongdoing on his part or her complicity in his crimes.

Channel 4’s documentary was a trade-off - we got previously unseen home movies (yay!), she got a chance to publicise her campaign Justice for Jeffrey (or something) - a cause inexplicably not taken up by any national newspaper. “If you can’t protect imprisoned peers who can you protect?” seemed to be the gist of it.

Familiar territory was cursorily covered - her dazzling academic career, Lord Archer’s serial shagging and inane business dealings. She likes to characterise him as Jeffrey, the risk-taker, the entrepreneur, the go-getter while pervert, swindler and shitbag more quickly spring to mind.

Court cases were like “being stripped naked and held up for examination” ignoring the fact that many people in Soho pay good money for that kind of treatment - her husband quite possibly among them.

Despite the contradictions of their marriage there’s little doubt that they made an effective team. They were the consummate social climbers - expert schmoozers with their now legendary shepherd’s pie and champagne parties where the great and the good would marvel at Mary’s incredible pie and Jeffrey’s significantly less credible tall stories.

Professor Lisa Jardine, former school pal at Cheltenham College, offered a rare moment of insight “I think, deep down, it crucifies her that Jeffrey has not been the huge success she had hoped for.”

She seems doomed to live the existence of a moll - patient, exasperated, star-struck - standing by her man like some pikey nightclub crooner.

Nice pie, though.

The verdict on Mary Archer - My Life with Jeffrey: Jailbird groupie skunk.

Marks out of 10: 7

Preston’s Walk Out on Never Mind The Buzzcocks

Simon Amstell began to read from Chantelle Houghton’s book Living The Dream: “I’ve always loved M&S, but it had always been too expensive for me. The photoshoot made me feel very posh and upmarket.” As the audience tittered, it was the final straw for Samuel Preston, gennulman and knight of the round table. He leapt from his chair with as much dignity as he could muster (in this case, none) and walked off the set in the manner of Dick Emery’s “you are awful but I like you” woman. The Never Mind The Buzzcocks audience members gasped as his rear-view revealed he had no arse at all to speak of.

Preston’s problem is he has a chip on his shoulder about his colossally stupid wife. He believes (correctly) that we all know she’s colossally stupid and consequently believes that every comment about her is obliquely referring to her colossal stupidity. He is a middle-class boy so desperate to adopt working-class culture that he left his lovely sophisticated French girlfriend to marry the kind of girl he thinks we all marry - a soppy salt-of-the-earth with a heart of gold and a brain of marshmallow.

Looking like Bryn, the village mong from The District Nurse, he tried to ice grill Amstell several times but he looked 12 years old and just served to emphasize the fact that his nipples outweigh the rest of his body by several ounces. With his glittery cardigan and tiny, tiny frame he looked like a contestant on Mini Pops, Channel Four’s doomed paedogeddon lip synch farce.

Some have characterised his actions as gallantry and they’re nothing of the sort. He knows he married a shallow, vapid twat and is understandably embarrassed about it. Given that all she does all day is polish his forehead and sell various parts of their private life to tabloid and gossip magazines she’s got to expect some negative publicity once in a while and her minute mong boy husband has got to suck it up also.

Presturd plainly thinks we should treat his wife like a handicapped child, unable to fend for herself and Chanturd has certainly spent her life cultivating this image. She’s always been the ditzy girl all in a tizz, twirling her hair, waiting for the big strong clever man to come along and get her out of a pickle. She’s famous for no reason at all and his band are so depressingly pointless they can barely be said to exist. You simply can’t trust a man with no lips and no arse.

And as for Presturd’s claim that he was about to punch Simon Amstell - does anybody seriously think he’d try that if Mark Lamarr were still host? Amstell, as ever, handled the situation excellently. You’d never really call him a professional looking presenter but, despite being obviously rattled by the incident, he pulled it through, aided by a Preston lookalike Bill Bailey dragged from the audience to complete the show.

Presturd insists he is not embarrassed by the clearly embarrassing broadcasting of his strop. “I think it’s brilliant - at least I’ve got principles. No one’s got principles any more,” said the publicity whore celebrity wedding photo selling cunt. Presturd can fuck himself in the ear all day every day and so can his parasite wife.

The verdict on Preston’s Walk Out on Never Mind The Buzzcocks: Worthless celebrity collapsing under its own weight.

Marks out of 10: 8

Sport on TV: pundits, commentaturds and their filthy lies

It's easy to forget that most docile product sponges will go through their lives seeing very little live sport so the medium of television is the delivery system for the majority of sport we consume and when that system is hijacked by corrupt dishonest coverage or deluded commentary we are left with a distorted picture of what sport is and TV needs to be held to account for that.

When done rightwise, though, it's a joy. HBO's boxing team have been nailing the shit out of their broadcasts for decades and that's why I pay tribute to the beast Larry Merchant. If there were more like him there would be less reason for chapters like this.

The World Cup has been kidnapped and molested by blowhard shitsacks who don’t care about football, tradition or noise pollution

When South Africa featured a gigantic dung beetle rolling a football across the pitch in its World Cup opening ceremony like some arcane faecal worship ritual, it was at once an act of social magic, a piece of grotesque symbolism and a chilling mission statement. It said “we are going to take the greatest team sport on the planet, the greatest sporting event in the universe and turd it up beyond all recognition. You fuckers won’t even recognize it by the time we’re through”. And, man alive, have they ever lived up to that?

It is no small undertaking to ruin Association Football’s World Cup and many have tried. Even giving it to The United States of America - a country who neither like nor understand the game - could fully screw up its magnificence. And yet South Africa has achieved it and the main weapon in its armoury is a shitty 3 foot long plastic trumpet known simply as the Vuvuzela.

The etymology of Vuvuzela is unclear. Many believe it comes from the onomatopoeic Zulu “vuvu” meaning “to make noise”. But as Aerial Telly has pointed out several times the etymology of a word is not its meaning. What Vuvuzela means is an instrument of show-off blowhard hogs with no interest in football, no consideration for others and no off button. The monophonic hornets’ nest honk is the least welcome sound since the ping of the last dress button holding Beth Ditto’s unholy gunt from spilling out.

Of course that despicable time serving commissar Sepp Blatter has defended the atrocity, claiming we should not seek to “Europeanise” the World Cup. Knowing full well that our aim is merely to denausify the tournament, Twatter has gone this line asking how we would feel if our traditions were banned in football grounds? What, you mean the spectacularly annoying ones nobody of consequence gives two fucks about? Delighted I’m sure. Next question?

In any case the idea of the Vuvuzela-as-beloved-traditional-horn is far from a universally acknowledged truth in South Africa. Mondli Makhanya, former editor-in-chief of the Johannesburg Sunday Times, has it right when he laments what Satan’s trumpet has done to the great South African tradition of public singing.

“During apartheid, we sung in the worst of times. When people were protesting, we sang. When people were being shot, we sang. We sing vociferously in funerals; we sing vociferously at weddings. What this instrument has done is to take something away from the football culture. And I think that, rather than celebrating it, we should actually be mourning the death of song.”

Yet Blatter still defends it. That gravy train piloting piece of shit’s only other contribution to the tournament is the introduction of the Adidas Jabulani ball, a ball whose unique selling point is its production of a “true flight”. Seasoned viewers will knows that the only thing Jabulani guarantees is a “true shite” football watching experience where the greatest selection of footballing talent on the planet cannot get a shot on target with it anywhere beyond 12 yards out. Big yourself up, Twatter - you’re a real piece of work.

For those that ain’t know I’ma break it down like this. Sepp Blatter is a spineless schmuck. South Africa is not a footballing country. Their fans desert the stadium the instant they start losing. Their only real interest in football teams is as a cover to murder 14 year old boys. Bafana Bafana sounds like one of Christopher Biggins’s catchphrases from On Safari. Apartheid is no longer South Africa’s biggest shame.

Consequently, every South African football “fan” past, present and future with a horn in his mouth can figgedy fuck right off into eternity.

World Cup Final 2010

“Bafana Bafana.....! Jabulani...!” screamed Peter Drury as Siphiwe Tshabalala (bless you!) slotted home the first goal of the 2010 World Cup as if every man jack of us were right behind plucky host nation Wherever the Fuck They’re Holding It This Year. In referencing a transcontinental solidarity that does not exist, Drury was complicit in a media-wide act of Olympic standard patronage, the kind of well-intentioned but ultimately condescending approach usually reserved for The Paralympics, that pointless shitbird of an event that the terminally nice pretend to be excited by.

Ever since that first game when the developed world began its month-long hate affair with the buzz killing vuvuzela and that dismal cuntmonkey of a football, the Adidas Jabulani (a perfectly spherical hate sponge that Craig Johnston correctly said encourages “prehistoric football”) it’s been a pale sea creature of a World Cup, undoubtedly one of the worst in the tournament’s history. As it reached a breathless climax last night, people wondered how would you ever end such a tournament? “With the triumph of good over evil” turned out to be the elusive obvious answer.

Because the Dutch side that kicked their way to the 2010 final were the antithesis of everything the country’s football has ever stood for. Paranoid, defensive, cynical, violent - they espoused a win-at-all-costs philosophy, and then lost. Redeemed, in some people’s minds, by tenacity, resilience and Arjen Robben they were unlikely comic villains causing much cognitive dissonance in the freewheeling Italia 90 generation who chiefly remember the Netherlands as the team they support when England get knocked out. Cruyff, Gullitt and van Basten replaced by the jocks who bullied them at school. Confusion abounded.

In mitigation, they did get rid of that pig-titted skunk Dunga and his horrific Brazilian side but they spent most of the tournament riding their luck hard and riding their opponents harder. Van Bommel in particular lived a charmed life as he stamped, kicked, niggled and deliberately tried to injure his fellow professionals. Still, they had the team spirit so that was OK. This Dutch side, at least, wouldn’t be subject to the centrifugal forces that tore apart so many of their predecessors. No superstars, second-guessers, narcissists or mutineers in this crew. This was a meritocracy of the mean.

In the opposite corner, meanwhile, wearing the white hat, were the European champions Spain, Vicente Del Bosque’s beautifully balanced side, master exponents of tiki-taka, that collectivism-in-action stylistic tour de force that turns passing triangles into Koch’s snowflake. Spain took control from the off, threatening to overrun the Orange hordes but Dutch thuggery soon took over. Mark van Bommel was booked for trying to cripple Iniesta, and Nigel de Jong was fortunate not to be charged with attempted murder after impaling Xabi Alonso through the chest on his boot. He escaped with a yellow.

It went on like this throughout the 90 minutes and extra time, Spain pressing like loons, being kicked up in the air then putting the freekick into Row Z.; the Dutch venturing forward occasionally with penetrating counters. When Andres Iniesta kept it gangsta with just four minutes left of extra time and ice-drilled a right footed shot past Maarten Stekelenburg, right-thinking people everywhere howled with joy as art’s victory over aggression was secured. Iniesta removed his shirt to reveal a T-shirt saying “Dani Jarque siempre con nostros” a tribute to the Espanyol player who died of a heart attack in August. After two hours of bruising frustration, the catharsis was sweet.

Chaos reigned in this World Cup and the horror is that that is so much duller than it sounds. FIFA, those inept drunk sluts, contrived to fuck up an event that is practically impossible to do badly. From the suicidal introduction of the Jabulani to the arrogant dismissal of video replays they once again confirmed their reputation as hospitality guzzling, ticket touting apparatchiks led by a professional administrator who has never kicked a ball in anger in his life. Ousting him and his kind from the sport’s governing body should be the guiding principle of every football related action in the four years before we head in 2014 to Brazil: land of the brave, home of the freekick. Replay technology, samba football and stadiums filled with swimwear models. We wait with the breath of the bated ones.

The verdict on World Cup final 2010: Dicey start, traumatic middle, great ending.

Marks out of 10: 7

The Contender

“Two men enter - one man leaves. Then the other guy does a bit later.”

It’s no secret that Muhammad Ali can barely do his Rice Krispies each morning without flooding the kitchen. What does it say about a sport that its greatest exponent has been so tragically monged up as a direct consequence of his participation in it?

I guess it says that these guys aren’t pissing about. Boxing is a sport of extremes - corrupt, brutal and morally inane. With qualifications like this it’s a wonder The Contender didn’t happen before. Reality TV was made for this kind of thing.

The brainchild of Mark Burnett (“The Apprentice,” “Survivor”), the show houses 16 top ranked middleweights together, two of whom fight each week - a five round professional bout that goes on their official record. The winner progresses to the final stages, the loser takes the lonely walk out of The Contender house. The final two will fight at Caesars Palace for a $1 million purse - the stakes are that high.

They’re guided through the process by boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard and boxing bell-end Sylvester Stallone. Some priceless unintentional comedy is provided by Stallone going around giving these seasoned professionals advice on boxing. Even though he doesn’t know shit about boxing. He played a boxer who didn’t know shit about boxing - a boxer whose ability to shout “Adriaaaaaaaan!!” at Francis Ford Coppola’s sister made him a cinematic turd of Olympian proportions.

Enough about the “why?” of Sly. You get to see the fighters at their best and their worse. A couple of exceptions aside, it’s difficult to dislike these guys. They all seem to be loyal, blue-collar salts, fighting for their families, hot girlfriends and angelic kids and that gets you rooting for them.

George Foreman pops in to offer the benefit of his vast experience and promote his Lean Mean Grilling Machine as a possible cure for cancer. The words ‘affable’ and ‘avuncular’ could have been invented for Big George but his legendary inability to call anything right about a boxing match is all too apparent. Not that it matters - the fighters are too star-struck to care. It may be hard to believe that Foreman has even stepped inside a ring, never mind been a cast-iron Hall of Famer but as Michael Moorer and Joe Frazier will attest, when you can bang like George you don’t need to know what you’re talking about.

It’s getting some historically bad viewing figures but that shouldn’t put you off - this is a very fine show. Boxing may not fit as snugly into the mainstream as it used to but there’s still no sport like it. Those eternal themes of noble combat, superhuman courage and senseless violence will see it endure.

The verdict on The Contender: Comfortable points victory.

Marks out of 10: 8

Euro 2008 TV coverage

An excellent, thrilling and marvellous Euro 2008 ended last night with the Spaniels the deserved winners, edging out the tenacious Hun in a tense final. Despite England’s absence the networks threw themselves into the TV coverage with all the stupidity and enthusiasm we’ve come to expect. The BBC had to win back the trust of the nation after having the brass balls to appoint that incandescent shitcake baker and multimillionaire-off-the-backs-of-the-people failure Steve McLaren to summarise on the radio. This showed all the judgement and good taste of Graeme Souness selling his story to The Sun three years after Hillsborough. It is an unholy miracle if that mope ever works in this country again.

But the BBC have sensibly retained manager of the famous Aston Villa, Martin O’Neill who continues to be good value - always opinionated, witty and not afraid to go against the party line. Alan Shearer can make some good points but he’s a fundamentally depressing audiovisual presence. I don’t see him being missed when he eventually takes over and relegates Newcastle.

Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson do a good job. Lawrenson seems to be less popular than scabies but he calls things right more often than not. There is then a certain amount of controversy this year about how the BBC choose their pundits. Ian Wright accused the BBC of treating him like a court jester but he was just fucking shite with no articulacy, insight or appreciation of tactics. And a court jester is funny.

Although, the BBC still don’t seem to have worked out that Marcel Desailly does not speak English, even as a second language. I really don’t need to hear from him 15 times a day that France have been disappointing. I know they are disappointing. They’re French - they were born disappointing.

Magnificently, David Pleat repeatedly referred to the Czech Republic as the Republic of Czechoslovakia. But he is not a geography teacher, he’s a football summariser and, though widely derided, he’s excellent on tactics and gives a good read of a manager’s intentions. I think people mainly give him a hard time just because they think he’s a kerb crawling twat. While no doubt true that’s hardly a reason, people.

Over on ITV, Steve Rider continues to be a waste of space. I can’t believe this boy has ever actually paid to get into a football match. Andy Townsend is likeable but dull, much like his colleague Robbie Earle. Everyone but me wants to kill Peter Drury - I’ve always found him alright. ITV is particularly fertile breeding ground for Colemanballs. Andy Townsend’s “The full-back is literally, literally right up the backside of Koller there.” being a personal favourite of mine. Gary “Chromosome” Neville turns up from time to time and is exactly as charismatic as you expect. ITV accepted BBC’s superiority by allowing the Beeb to broadcast the final uncontested.

In other news, Garth Crooks is still around. I have no idea why.

The verdict on Euro 2008 TV coverage: A lame of two halves.

Marks out of 10:7

Listen up, douchebags: Larry Merchant KO1 murdering rapist hype merchant scum that constitute boxing’s deal-making fight-avoiding turd elite

Regular Aerial Telly readers will be familiar with his unparalleled standing in the world of boxing. An improbably gifted amateur fighter, he chose to develop his literary genius rather than crush everything in his wake in the professional ranks. But of course boxing remains close to his heart and the news that HBO will not be renewing the contract of Larry Merchant is a matter of grave concern to him. He may be 140 years old. He may stink of vodka. He may have pissed off every boxer, trainer and promoter in the business. But Larry Merchant is a true original, a broadcasting giant and a fearless sayer of the unsaid in boxing.

Merchant has always understood that boxing is a gigantic hype machine that spirals out of control if it is not checked and challenged. Fighters painting themselves as fearless warriors while avoiding every difficult opponent out there; alphabet soup title belts not worth the leather they’re made with; meaningless turd jousts presented as must-see pay-per-view extravaganzas. Nobody clears a path through the horseshit in boxing like Larry Merchant. As Vernon Forrest thanked God and his trainer after his gift decision over Ike Quartey, Merchant innocently asked him “Would you also like to thank the judges?”

Determined never to be a cheerleader for boxing, Larry sees the fight game from a fan’s perspective and it’s often caused him trouble. After Don King and HBO fighter Mike Tyson shamelessly tried to overturn Buster Douglas’s legitimate knockout victory over Tyson, Merchant asked difficult questions and King and Tyson tried to get him the sack. To their eternal credit, HBO stood by their man and told the rapist and the murderer to go fuck themselves which they duly did. Merchant’s assessment of Tyson as “an emotionally-disturbed washed-up sociopath” is typically astute.

With his unique pausing speech and bizarre analogies, his broadcasting style has authentic character - in sharp contrast to so many of the boilerplate presenter droids you see around today. Ever willing to criticise an HBO house fighter if necessary, his knowledge and love of the sport have nonetheless always shone through.

The only time HBO should be taking his microphone is when they prise it out of his cold, dead hands.

Larry Merchant - boxing legend and broadcasting pioneer. Respect is due.

606 with Danny Baker

Like Aerial Telly, Danny Baker is a flawed genius. Aerial Telly has spoken about his own so-called alleged “flaws” and would like to talk about Danny Baker’s. He’s an arrogant and won’t heed counsel. His television work is horrible. Listening to his Radio 1 show was like watching a beautiful woman pull a razor blade across her face^1 and left us at the mercy of the Sendero Luminoso talent free 1FM house music junta for the next 10 years. Nevertheless, Aerial Telly does not come here to rag on Danny Baker, but to give him a pound and a bear hug. Because when this motherfucker is in the zone there’s no one who can touch him. 606 with Danny Baker has returned. The only 606. The original, accept no imitations, back-caught-you-looking-for-the-same-thing, distilled in Lynchburg, Tennessee 606 with Danny Baker. Motherfucker, what?

The strange thing about Baker is that he knows nothing about football. It’s probably the only thing he knows nothing about. Ferociously intelligent, with an insatiable appetite for culture high, low or subterranean, he takes the theological stance that “football is chaos” and, rather like the Catholic Church telling cosmologists not to study the origin of the universe because it is the work of God and to study it is to blashpheme, he seems to think that an understanding of the mechanics of football - tactics, training, formation - will rob it of its magic.

What he does know about is being a football fan. A Millwall fan no less. The parade of burlesque caricatures that pass through a club like Millwall - managers, players, fans - provide rich inspiration for talk-show topics. But to notice these things is an act of creation. The Chicken Judas, Keggy Keegle, Camp Lawrenson - these things already existed as Platonic Ideals but it took a particular mind to draw them in from the immaterial world and make them flesh. Danny Baker is that mind.

He hits the ground running on his return. He wonders if Rory Delap achieves his throw-in prowess by means of a reptilian tale. This leads to a request for footballers with lizard like qualities. It’s 10 a.m. Saturday morning and we’re already on to herpetology. He talks to a British woman about being lost in an American baseball stadium and how security won’t accept her British driving licence as ID. He sympathises. “The old pink driving licence looks like a receipt for a teddy bear”. Truedat.

It’s all good. The weekend football action was only tangentially relevant. He demands a lot of his listeners and they like the challenge. There are deep seams of darkness, joy and weirdness in the collective experience of the British football fan. Long may they be mined.

The verdict on 606 with Danny Baker: Some nifty scheduling.

Marks out of 10: 8

1 Courtesy of Hugh McIlvanney or some such grizzled old school hump.

Gong intermission

Aerial Telly Awards 2006

Asking Aerial Telly to choose between his favourite TV shows is like asking him to choose between his children. But, as those of you with children know perfectly well, there’s always one you secretly like better. And there’s generally one runty little cunt who you never really loved who you have been secretly dying to get rid of. You “people” make me sick.

Nonetheless, it’s around that time of year when I commence with the back slapping and the bitch slapping in the only industry awards that mean a damn thing: it’s the Aerial Telly Awards 2006. Look! It’s Kelly Brook and Billy Zane - they can Fuck Right Off if they think they’re getting in.

Best show: Prison Break (FOX)

It took our suspension of disbelief to levels that made us think 24 was cinéma vérité. We sweated, we shook, we howled - but it was all worth it. Because Lunk NEVER DONE IT and damn the conspiracy that keeps him on death row with his cereal box head and fat fingers. Fox River may be the only prison in America where nobody farts, swears or says nigga but you wouldn’t want to be spending much time there as being shanked, raped or mutilated is pretty much guaranteed. Prison Break’s season finale did not disappoint and we wait breathlessly for September’s sophomore effort.

Worst show: Nigella (ITV)

A shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a woman who does not exist. Nigella Lawson - you may have heard of her. We miss the old Nigella Lawson (although with the size of her arse you couldn’t miss her from the moon) - flirty, indulgent and homely. She was replaced by the Stepford wife of Charles Saatchi in a woozy, anaemic mixture of cookery and chat that made you feel like you were stuck in a menopausal housewife’s dream state

Best performance by a male: Idris Elba as Stringer Bell in HBO’s The Wire

Continuing Hugh Laurie’s fine work in counter cultural imperialism, Hackney-born Idris Elba delivered pitch perfect performances as the ice veined Barksdale crew drugs baron Stringer Bell. Aided by some classy writing Elba portayed Bell as the embodiment of the rational, cold hearted machinations of the drug trade. Stringer’s big question was “what happens when you have an inferior product in an aggressive market?” The market was inelastic, Donette’s tits were plastic and the show was fantastic.

Best performance by a female: Jaime Pressly as Joy in NBC’s My Name Is Earl

Comedic find of the year My Name Is Earl needed some grit in the feel-good oyster. Step forward sometime Playboy model Jaime Pressly as Earl’s ex-wife Joy playing demented bad cop to the collective good intention of the rest of the cast. Representing all that’s wrong with humanity, Pressly plays the role with an unholy glee that suggests a secret affinity with the avaricious loon. And remember: If you’re looking for reasonably priced manicures gentle enough for a woman and man enough for a half fruit: call Joy’s Nails.

TV Pie of the Year: Jaime Murray as Stacey Munroe on Hustle

It might so easily have gone to panda eyed honey cunted goddess Tina O’Brien from Corrie. Few would have argued with Nadine Velazquez from My Name Is Earl. And fat arsed lupine Bingo from the Banana Splits looking motherfucking cockmonkey Billie Piper could so easily have stolen the day. But the horse faced sophistimacated con artist Jaime Murray won by a short head with a combination of posh frocks and knowing eyebrow raises that suggested that she was indeed pure filth. Steward’s inquiry? Later for that shit.

TV Event of the Year: The Apprentice finale

Flagcracking yam-yam sumo atrocity Ruthless Badger faced off against icy abused child Michelle Dewberry Pie in a showdown many were already calling “the last episode in this particular series of The Apprentice”. The weeks of clashing egos, mismanaged tasks and boardroom beatdowns cascaded into champagne and cancans on Tower Bridge. Badger clocked up the most ducats but the old shrewdie Sugar realised that staring at the Badger pie day-in day-out for three years would inevitably lead to suicide and chose the fairer form from the school of hard knocks. Meritocrats cried foul but suckers for a sob story from a pretty blonde girl recognised that he had made the right choice.

Worst premise: Alive: Back To The Andes (Channel 5)

Using celebrities to recreate a disaster that involves a plane crash, a mountain range and cannibalism was not something top of my list of Programmes That Need To Be Made (top of that particular list is Going Dyke with Michelle Dewsbury and Sophie Ellis-Bextor trivia fans). None of that stopped Channel 5 from this spectacularly misguided project only saved from total disaster by the real survivors’ harrowing testimony. That they actually ate raw meat to recreate the cannibalism was just a further insult to the memory of the dead who were soon sharing airtime with Adam Ricketts’ grievances about the media. Nobody deserves that.

Most Unjustly Culled Show: Bodies, BBC3

Life is unfair and TV is never less than an accurate reflection of life. Take Paul McCartney - about to get abandoned and taken for 40 squllion in the inevitable divorce by his lunatic wife. Yes. Paul McCartney - faithful and loyal to Linda for 30 years despite being the pretty one out of The Beatles (and therefore having the proverbial key to the pie shop whenever he damn well pleases).

Then on the other hand there’s the serial womaniser, wife beating smackhead John Lennon. Whose dick do you think women were women trying to suck? Was it the loyal, prettier faithful Paul? Fuck out of here.

And Bodies doesn’t get a third series. Try ‘splaining that.

Documentary tards: deviants, wackjobs and Peaches Geldof

What should be the flickering screened embodiment of television's duty to inform and entertain - the documentary - is too often a playground for mentally subnormal parasitic attention seekers of all hue. Trying to fathom the depths of vacuity within Peaches Geldof and sending in professional cabbage Fearne Cotton led us into dark territory but it was Fix My Fat Head that really took the soggy biscuit for stupid, slobby, worthless journalism with a hog for a host, subject and narrator.

The bottom line is that there is a surplus of documentaries and not enough authentic subjects to justify them. Narcissist tools need to be targeted, neutralised and asphyxiated - then we can hear the grown-ups talk.

My Penis And I

We all have our demons and our ways of dealing with them. Film-maker Lawrence Barraclough has dealt with his tiny penis by making a film about it and broadcasting it to 1.5 million people. I think that takes big balls (or maybe they just look big next to his wiener?)

Whether My Penis and I shows a remarkable faith in his fellow man or a need to be the centre of attention is unclear. Either way, he's certainly putting it on the chopping block with this high-risk strategy. Would you really want every girl in Britain knowing your secret?

That's not an immediate issue for Lawrence as some lucky lady has already snapped him up. They've been together for nine years but the girl in question takes some persuading to appear in the film. “I don’t want be thought of as the girlfriend of the guy with the small dick.” she explains. I forget her name as she wasn’t sexually attractive. Let’s just call her “the girlfriend of the guy with the small dick”.

Lawrence wonders what it is about penis size that so obsesses men. “So, I’m going to Birmingham to talk with my dad about his penis”. There’s a sentence I hope I never have to say again.

He first approaches his mother and there’s a very strange creepy scene where he talks to her about his father’s penis. “What did you think when you first saw it?” His mother replies “That’s personal”. I should bloody think so too. The Oedipal complications of this scene would require a sturdier stomach than mine to untangle.

Mammy proudly informs him that he comes from a long line of small cocks, so he quizzes his father about his experiences in the army, changing in front of his well-hung comrades. “My dong wasn’t as big as some of the guys there” dad reveals. Thus, the film brilliantly establishes early on that Some Boys Are Bigger Than Others.

Lawrence’s investigations then takes him uptown - doing the nightlife with five girls who all tell him it’s all in his head, it’s what you do with it that counts and other fatuous phoney baloney. Then he meets two pissed scuttlers, unaware of his film-making, who proudly tell him “of COURSE it matters”. There’s always someone.

The girlfriend of the guy with the small dick finally allows herself to be filmed and she takes a phlegmatic “there there” approach to the issue. You can tell she really wants to be dicked down by the type of monster that Aerial Telly be packing but she’d want to get those teeth sorted out before that happens.

A trip to visit Cynthia Plastercaster (the famous groupie who takes plaster-casts of rock stars erect penises) sees her take a cast of Lawrence’s flaccid penis in one of the most pointless scenes I can remember. The suspicion that Lawrence just likes travelling around and talking about himself is difficult to shift.

He returns to school where he was bullied for his schlong deficiency. There didn’t seem to be much point to this outing and the school changing room door seemed to agree, refusing to admit him entry. So there we stood in mute contemplation outside the door of the location where some of the cruellest jibes may have been thrown. Not quite the Berlin Wall footage is it?

He finds some kind of closure by visiting a Manhattan support group for men with small penises. Once he knows he’s not alone, cooped up in an ivory tower of needle-dickdom he perks up a hell of a lot. The girlfriend of the guy with the small dick is happy because he’s happy. Their relationship improves because he learns to love himself.

And yet she seems kind of bored with the whole thing. I know the feeling.

The verdict on My Penis And I: Like jumping over buses, brave but ultimately pointless.

Marks out of 10: 6

Fix My Fat Head

In the end, the self-pity always comes through. Once the self-deprecation, tales of previous diets and bad observational stand-up culled from 45 abortive open mic nights are over, the whining will begin. Every single documentary about a fat person who apparently can’t lose weight is inevitably drawn into a whirlpool of ‘poor me’. And man alive does this tub of guts know how to whine? Hannah Jones, 36 years and 22 stones of wobbly narcissism writes a column about being fat. Not that she is self obsessed or anything but she believes that her gunt is so fucking important that in addition to her weekly first person waaaah-waaaah shtick she has spent six months investigating psychological treatment for obesity. Fix My Fat Head she cries. Because it just has to be psychological.

Like all fat people, Hannah is a slob. She looks like shit, feels like it, acts like it but is too lazy to do anything about it. Every effort she makes is a token one. She’s a never-ending source of feeble excuses. We should get one thing clear from the off: fat people feel no more hunger than the rest of us. They’ve just adopted the strategy of talking about it more.

Hannah has tried every diet going. Well hasn’t every fat bastard you’ve ever met? They’ve tried Atkins, good carb, low-fat, Cambridge, Beverly Hills, cabbage soup, Dr Phil, Rosemary Conley and Aerial Telly’s personal favourite Neanderthin, a diet based around that of Palaeolithic man (Hannah passed this when she heard woolly mammoth was not on the menu). Yes, she’s tried every diet going. Tell you what though, chubby: you ever tried the consuming fewer calories than you burn off diet? It’s got a 100% success rate. No? Colour me stunned.

As is often the case, Orca has a slim borefriend who is half decent looking, who could certainly do a lot better than her. She’s not even got a good face and the rest of her is shite. Whatever, this chump supports her as she tries Lighter Life, a weight-loss programme that focuses on the dieter’s emotional relationship with food; Susan Hepburn, hypnotherapist to the stars who aided Lily Allen’s crash diet that saw her plummet from a size 14 to a size 12 and a psychotherapist who finds out she was sometimes lonely as a child and that food was her very best friend. Bombshell.

So the six months come to a close and Hannah proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the psychological approach is the only humane and effective way for people who are addicted to food (because it is an addiction, it really is) by shedding literally stones of weight. Oh wait, no she doesn’t. Because the abysmal pleb has actually put on weight during her self-pity orgy. One semicircuit of the Sun to waste our time and eat more pies offering no insight, no closure and no weight loss.

Hannah has once again “tried” everything. But the stumbling block is always the eating less part. The moment she realises the current program she’s on involves being less of a hog she pulls a face like Les Dawson’s Ada Sidebottom and wobbles out of the room, jowls a-judder. “OK, I haven’t lost any weight” she says breezily “but maybe, just maybe - I’m finally on the right track”. And thus finishes one of the most worthless documentaries ever commissioned. It monumentally fails in everything it set out to do. It is catastrophically stupid and lazy. But seriously: what you expect when you employ a fat bastard? That’s what they do, that’s what they are.

Successful living is about sacrifice. You can’t have your pie and eat it. Grown-ups understand this. But people like Fat Hannah think they’re entitled to everything without any effort. She plays lip service to the idea of self-denial but she never had any intention of going without fatty food, reducing her portions or exercising more. Not for a heartbeat, never in a million years, even with cameras following her every move. Because this is not about weight loss, it’s about Hannah being a self obsessed twat. It’s about her being acknowledged as the brave, plucky, self-deprecating, have-a-go hero she’s categorically not. This is a flabby documentary about a flatulent fraud with an insatiable hunger to talk about herself. She can fuck right off.

The verdict on Fix My Fat Head: As futile as buying a gym membership.

Marks out of 10: 4

Guys And Dolls

The commodification of human intimacy is an inevitable by-product of advanced capitalism. Everything has a price tag after all. And with most jobs and lifestyles being bereft of fulfilment, joy or any prospect of emotional connection with your fellow man, it’s a wonder we’re not all on the game. The existence of the real doll subculture should therefore only come as a surprise to those head-in-the-sand Pollyannas who think there’s a boy out there for every gal and a gal for every boy. All you suckers out there need to know just one thing: there IS a girl out there for you. The trouble is she’s already slept with Aerial Telly and the prospect of dating a man like you is one too awful for her to contemplate. She’s had Prime Beef and now you’re going to try and feed her Quorn substitute? What kind of “man” are you?

Five’s Guys And Dolls gave us a glimpse into the lives of some doll fuckers and was commendably matter-of-fact about it. Perhaps feeling that the subject matter was strange enough and not in need of sensationalising, they gave their subjects a fair run at explaining themselves without sneaky editing, phoney set-ups and other such documentary dirty tricks. For those of you who missed the Real Dolls memo God sent (and you’re in good company there) they are lifelike rubber replicas of attractive young women who are purchased, dressed and fucked by slightly less lifelike men

Men like Everard, a 48 year-old computer technician who is in a long-term relationship with his doll Virginia. As her latex tits point up at him from the bed he says “She just lies there. (The dolls) are very static. They don’t react at all”. Oh no fucking shit? I was expecting her to be doing the can-can. He insists that having the doll is “certainly better than going without any female company at all” something which he at least seems to have extensive knowledge of.

With Everard you are struck by the sheer banality of his perversion. He’s quite up front that his doll hobby exists because he can’t get any real ass. But Virginia certainly gets out a fair amount - Everard is a keen hang-glider and she sits patiently in his car, head assiduously turned in his general direction as he glides over hill and dale.

Everard can’t understand why women aren’t impressed by his hang-gliding. “I would expect women to be naturally attracted to the types of blokes who do exciting things” he says in his turdly nasal monotone. It’s all in the delivery, Everard. “Here I am, a superhero but it’s deemed irrelevant”. I wouldn’t worry too much - The Silver Surfer had his women troubles too. You didn’t catch him porking puppets on the quiet.

Costing around £4,000 each it’s not surprising that the men see them as a long-term commitment. In America, Mike owns eight which is enough for a volleyball team with a couple of substitutes. Unlike most real doll enthusiasts, Mike dates real women and he’s recently hooked up with Jody, a woman he met through the internet. “As soon as he saw this” said Jody, pointing to a barely visible nose stud “He knew I was open-minded”. Shit girl, it’s all about scale. A chick having a nose stud merely means you might be able to get a blowjob without giving three weeks’ notice. Your man’s fucking the cast of Malibu Barbie: The Porn Years. Sporting a piercing last considered outré in 1957 ain’t preparing you for this.

But with admirable faith in human nature, Mike invites Jody to his birthday party where he will introduce the full extent of his obsession. She enters his house to be greeted by two of his dolls, fully dressed but with panties showing, legs splayed, comedy breasts and sporting party hats. “I need a beer” is her understandable response. After some discussion and getting used to the idea she says “I’m perfectly fine with it”. A week later she ends the relationship. It seems the Sisterhood Of Nose Piercing just didn’t have what it took. Shame.

Contemplate the real doll. She sits there, mute and glaring. You can never have anything in common. She can never love you and your love for her is an illusion. You can’t have a proper conversation, can’t ever ask her opinion, can’t relate to her as a real human - she is simply a very expensive cumbucket.

Let’s be honest - we’ve all had girlfriends like that.

The verdict on Guys And Dolls: “I’m a Barbie girl in the Barbie world. Life in plastic, it’s fantastic”.

Marks out of 10: 7

Cutting Edge: My Kid’s Psychic

Children make things up. It’s a thing they do before they develop a moral sense and can fully distinguish between fantasy and reality. They rely upon their parents to interpret this the correct way and quietly tell them that it’s wrong to tell fibs and that no one in life likes a bullshitter. Of course, if the parent ignores the lies or, worse still, actively encourages them, then you’re left with a situation where the child wields a huge amount of power over the parent, the tail wags the dog and that never ends well.

Yes, it’s My Kid’s Psychic, folks - just another non-judgmental look at lunatics from the nation’s TV makers. The “documentary” followed a pair of useless parents Nicola and Simone on their deluded quest to prove that their children have psychic ability. Replete with pink hair and tattooed tit, Nicola is the kind of insane menopausal New Age flagcracker you can’t move for round my way. She believes her 15 year-old daughter Heather to have great psychic and healing abilities. Heather used to see strange things as a child, though we’ll have to take Nicola’s word for this as Heather doesn’t remember seeing anything.

Nicola had seven miscarriages before she had her children. She now believes that her miscarried foetuses live with them in the house. “If some things are missing from the room we know the children have taken them.” Oh for the love of fuck.

The Gifted One, Heather, is obviously loving the attention and keen to develop her psychic abilities. Brother Christopher is less convinced. He is asked “Do you think your mother’s making it all up?”

“Yes.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Mid-life crisis.”

No stranger myself to delivering the verbal Mexican liver punch, I must immediately take my hat off to this young man for his devastating matricidal response. Getting to the heart of his mother’s pathology in a two-word phrase and it was not even the more obvious “loopy cunt”. Maybe she’s not such a terrible parent after all if she produced him?

But Nicola is not alone in her lunacy as we find out when we are introduced to Simone and Oliver. Oliver, 8, sees dead people - like the kid in The Sixth Sense. The truth is more prosaic. Oliver’s the thick kid at school and Simone can’t believe that she’s raised a dummy. “He twitches and starts running in circles.” Yes, that’s because your kid is fucking mental. Keep him away from other kids for the love of God. Oliver was diagnosed with ADDH and put on Ritalin but Simone has taken him off the drug because it upsets her. “I’m on a quest to find out what’s wrong with Oliver”. He’s a lunatic - just like his mother. Quest over.

Oliver, of course, is also fucking loving the attention. Though as the cameras roll and his mother shamelessly prompts him to come up with some visions, Oliver steadfastly refuses, preferring to lie down for a kip. “Yeah, the spirits are making me go to sleep now mom”

“Isn’t that strange?” Simone asks the camera crew. Strange doesn’t begin to cover it, sister.

When not favouring her idiot daughter over her intelligent son, Nicola gives pisspoor cold readings on the Destiny Channel and runs courses promoting the development of indigo and crystal children - children who New Age types believe have psychic powers and are an evolutionary leap forward. Yes, they really, really are.

When she was little, Nicola’s parents didn’t believe in her psychic abilities, what with them not existing and all, and she’s plainly never forgiven them. She’s working out her issues through children and she’s a controversial figure even among the crystal worshipping indigo freaks. There’s a suppressed hatred of children at work here - a resentment of their potential and a twisted desire to control them and put them to work for her own needs. It’s vile.

It’s obvious to anyone that Nicola is a sick piece of shit who should be locked up in a rubber room for a long, long time. But all Cutting Edge can do is play moody Sapphire and Steel background music and sit on the fucking fence. Cutting Edge, when are you actually going to do a number on these cunts and actually have the balls to stand by it? Do the documentary, take the stance, put your tin hat on and take the shit when it comes. You don’t believe this woman is a harmless idiot - you think that she’s a dangerous fuck.

Well fucking say so.

The verdict on Cutting Edge: My Kid’s Psychic: Just another cop-out.

Marks out of 10: 3

Inside Waco

I guess what we can all agree on is that a bunch of children being burnt alive was a bad thing. They didn’t ask to be there with these god-awful freaks - you don’t choose your parents after all. If you did then Apple Martin Paltrow would have opted for a less toxic pair of parents (Rose and Fred West perhaps). So yes, barbecued infants: bad. And it can’t have been much more fun for the adults but at least they were 100% responsible for the unholy fuck up they had created in the name of Armageddon and selling out their humanity to a spiritual huckster.

Inside Waco was a revealing look at the colossal Waco fuck up of 1993. Dramatic reconstruction and news footage from the time portrayed the events when a raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on the Branch Davidian compound went badly wrong and a resulting siege made things about 10 times worse. The raid left four agents and six Davidians dead. A fire that ended the siege killed 80. By anyone’s standards, not a stellar chapter in the FBI’s history.

Inside the compound, David Koresh was accepted as the second coming of Christ. He preached polygamy for himself and abstinence for everyone else. He raped children of 12 and 13 with their parents’ consent and fathered children with them. He accumulated an impressive arsenal of rifles and illegal automatic weapons. The sound of gunfire from the firing ranges was an ever-present feature of the compound and it was this that initially alerted the authorities to the potential dangers at Mount Carmel.

As ever, the problem with these programmes is that the frauds who followed Koresh were spoken to like they were normal human beings, victims of some horrible circumstance beyond their control. Surviving Branch Davidians effortlessly assume the moral high ground against the FBI which must come easily to people whose big moral statement in life is colluding with a paedophile. Yes, let’s dog the people who try to enforce democratically legislated law but let’s go easy on the people who pimped out their wives and children to the baby rapist.

There’s a big debate about which side first opened fire. I don’t know whether the FBI fired the first shot. I don’t care. There was a Book Of Revelation quoting paedophile armed to the gills surrounded by unquestioning stormtroopers - people who had already whored out their families. The FBI were entirely entitled to shoot at any one who was armed. Apocalyptic death cults aren’t big on the sanctity of life.

The verdict on Inside Waco: Widespread death with no lessons learned.

Marks out of 10: 7

Old Enough To Be His Mother

Aerial Telly doesn’t make judgments. That’s not his stilo. We regularly run non-judgmental pieces on all kinds of perverts: porno perverts, sister fuckers, celeb shaggers - we’ve had them all in our lair. So it was only a matter of time before we got round to CRADLE SNATCHING SLUTS or as official channel of Aerial Telly Channel 5 preferred it Old Enough To Be His Mother, part of their Hidden Lives series.

It looked at women married to men at least 20 years their junior and talked to the weirdos about the challenges they faced and the ups and downs of being a filthy deviant.

The star couple were 70 year-old scrote Edna and her 31 year-old lantern-jawed turd of a husband Simon who seemed to be some kind of organ playing God-botherer though this was never made explicit.

In one of the most gratuitously offensive scenes ever screened, Simon and Edna make out naked in the shower. It looked as if Simon was wrestling a giant animatronic melting Madame Tussauds waxwork. The spliced-up off cuts of the works of David Cronenberg contain nothing this horrifying.

Edna is plainly delighted with herself - she’s never acted her age, she tells us, so why start now? And the grannyfucker is clearly getting some kind of perverse pleasure from it so who are we to judge?*

Simon was a virgin before meeting Edna so he probably thinks this is normal. I suppose somebody could tell him that there are women around his own age whose tits are both in the same postal code but what would that achieve? Ignorance is bliss and this pair of bastards seem happy enough.

The next freakshow was mother of ten Ruth, 49, and Simon, 21. Ruth is ten years older than Simon’s mother and six of her children are older than him. Which makes family gatherings interesting, I’m sure. It’s not all laffs though as Ruth suffers from “multiple orgasm syndrome”, which means she comes around 30 times a day. I’m not making this up.

Doing a very good impersonation of the “ooh I’m sorry, I’ve just come” man from The Fast Show, Ruth collapses by some swings under the megaton force of one of her orgasms.

Simon shows great fortitude in dealing with a mature woman with a power steering clit - apparently just walking into the room sends her into ecstasy. That’s many men’s fantasy though I’d settle for Montserrat Lombard, Billie Piper and a hot tub but I’m strange like that.

No such worries for Norma, a few months short of collecting her buspass at 59, who is boffing Chris, 27. Another apparently happy couple, tensions only rise when Norma raises the delicate issue of what happens when she is so decrepit they can no longer have sex.

He’d rather not think about it. I’d rather not think about it. I’d rather not think of them having sex at all, so I guess we’re all shit out of luck.

I suppose we should thank Channel 5 for Hidden Lives - the televisual equivalent of a policeman’s torch, shining a light into society’s dark alleys and revealing the horrors within.

But aren’t some things better left unseen? Because if Anthony Perkins skewering Janet Leigh in Psycho is the most horrifying shower scene you’ve encountered then get ready to think again.

The verdict on Old Enough To Be His Mother: There’s no perv like an old perv.

Marks out of 10: 7.5

* Aerial Telly, motherfucker that’s who

Seduction School: Size Doesn’t Matter

There is no braver warrior on the planet than the unattractive nice guy approaching a pretty girl in the hope of “getting to know her better”. Men will walk to their certain deaths secure in the knowledge that it can never be worse than the symbolic annihilation thousands of men put themselves through every weekend in the sick ritual of chatting up the honies. To men like Aerial Telly it holds no fear of course because from the moment I walk in the club your girl be clocking me and I gots to tell her to back up off a brother. We all know that I’m going to be macking that dame before the night is out.

Your reality is one shared by many men. Something addressed in Seduction School: Size Doesn’t Matter, the first instalment of Shape of the Nation series, a three-parter dealing with our obsession with appearance. The show featured seduction gurus Wayne Elise and Jonny Saviour (proponents of the Juggler Method) trying to drill some mack tactics into three hopelessly insecure men. Neil is a 22-stone virgin who has never even kissed a girl; Dave is a grotesque 6ft 6 GIANT who wimps out of approaching women and Adrian is 5 ft tall and therefore The Smallest Man That Ever Lived. He can’t get girls to see him as more than just a friend. In fact, they can’t see him at all without crouching.

The gurus put the boys through a boot camp of approaching strange women in the street and starting conversations with them. Dave the Giant puts in an abysmal effort, taking 20 minutes to even sit down at a table adjacent to some females. Tiny Adrian walks up to a girl seated on some steps but his squeaky Jiminy Cricket vocal merely causes her to collapse in gales of laughter and swat him aside. Walking lard mountain Neil strikes up the first meaningful conversation by claiming to be a panda bear. The only thing giving him away is that a panda bear moves quicker.

So the seduction gurus are faced with a reasonably tall man who believes he is Goliath, a man in a four-year-old child’s body and a smiling tub of guts who believes himself to be a panda bear. You can see that they have their work cut out.

And they quickly get cracking teaching the losers the importance of kino (light touching), assertive body-language and statements of intent (letting the target know you think she’s sexy). And on they go with the usual self-improvement makeover horseshit that we can recite in our sleep by now. The Juggler Method is a bit shit to be honest. Heavily derivative of the Mystery Method, it’s a mixture of the bleeding obvious and highly tenuous. The most effective thing any man can do to improve his strike rate with the dames is simply to get out there, get chatting and try his luck. The seduction gurus force them into these situations relentlessly so it’s not surprising that some progress is made. Tiny Adrian is having difficulty telling a female friend that he wants her in the Bad Way. At some point, he plucks up the courage to tell her and she tells him to fuck himself which he seems to take as some kind of victory. If that’s a positive outcome, what’s your version of a failure?

The seduction gurus seemed to claim success on the final night because Jabba and the dwarf got a phone number each and Dave the Giant had a snog with a flagcracker. And if you see the fucking prices they charge you realise that since Neil Strauss blew the lid on the underground seduction community in The Game, this is one helluva racket these guys have got going on.

And it’s not slowing down any time soon. Every fucker’s an expert on women now and they’re all taking MasterCard. Men are always going to want to get laid and where alcohol and flattery haven’t worked, paying a stranger $1,600 to shout at you in public probably seems fair enough.

The verdict on Seduction School: Size Doesn’t Matter: I think of you more as a friend.

Marks out of 10: 6

My Friend Michael Jackson

Most of us wouldn't be in a rush to tell the world of our friendship with an anti-Semite paedophile but most of us aren't Uri Geller and most kiddy fiddling Jew bashers aren't Michael Jackson. It clearly didn't take much persuasion for Geller to share his deeply personal and deeply private intimate footage of his friendship with the King of Pop for the documentary My Friend Michael Jackson. Geller is a huckster to his core and this taints everything that comes out of his mouth. At the end of the day he's just another cunt with a story to tell - he just has some pretty neat footage. Take the renewal of his wedding vows ceremony where Michael was his best man. Uri doesn't like talking about it but he'll do it for you. And Michael. His friend.

The wedding ceremony footage is indeed bizarre (it's Michael Jackson - of course it's bizarre). Jackson looking exactly as strange as you expect a racially self-mutilated pederast to, he seems to have little idea what's going on or who anyone (including Geller) is. Industrial strength painkillers clearly have him in thrall and rather like when Mr Burns inhales Ether and hallucinates Homer Simpson is Poppin' Fresh, Jackson seems to think Uri Geller is Jesus Christ or some other failed Hebrew Messiah. The strangeness multiplies.

But once the drugs have worn off, Geller needs to keep Michael's interest so he starts spinning him a yarn about GOING TO THE MOON. See, Uri knows this guy yeah? He works for Boeing, the plane people, but he has “ties to NASA” and he tells Uri that “no matter how science fiction it sounds” it is possible to send Michael Jacksons TO THE MOON.

Pardon me but how exactly is going to the moon science fiction? Not exactly Brave New World is it? This is the equivalent of a talk with a bloke in a pub who knows someone who went out with Madonna. Michael Jackson is a mess of squeaking ecstasy on an answerphone message he leaves for Geller. Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk ON THE MOON.

So yes, just like the rest of his career, Uri Geller was selling snake oil. And boy did Michael Jackson lap it up? It was in his nature to believe the manifestly untrue. Like Geller tells us “Michael Jackson believed in the impossible”. Inserting his forearm into a 9-year-olds cancer victim's anus for example.

But he believed in the totally plausible too - like the ability of a hugely famous man to get a tour of the Houses of Parliament. Accompanied by that other shameless schmuck David Blaine and that blowhard gladhander Greville Janner, Geller and Jackson twat about for a while in Whitehall and Jackson gets it into his head that he deserves a knighthood from the Queen. If he only knew the power of a discreet donation to the Labour Party.

The freakshow continues. There's footage of the pair at Paddington station on the way to a function at Exeter City Football Club where Geller is joint chairman. As a well-behaved but curious crowd gather round Geller squeals “You're crushing him! Honour Michael!” and here we have an excellent demonstration of what a bullshitter he is. He says he feared for Jackson's life and that the weight of bodies simply could not be contained yet you're there watching the footage and there are just a few dozen people milling around, significant fewer than any given morning rush-hour. Believe Geller, though, and it's just a heartbeat away from the Hillsborough disaster.

But like all great friendships based on convenience, delusion and fame, it was to come to an end. The breaking point was Geller introducing Jackson to Martin Bashir with an eye to a career changing interview. It made perfect sense. After all, Bashir was the man who had rehabilitated Princess Diana.

The problem was that Diana was a pretty posh girl and fundraiser, wronged in relationships and life, with a 10th Dan in media manipulation. Michael Jackson was an emaciated puncture wound riddled baby rapist, wrong in relationships and life, with a 10th Dan in looking like a cunt. It's a much tougher sell, see?

When the documentary revealed a balcony baby dangling fucknut unfit to be anywhere near children Jackson blamed the first entourage groupie dipshit standing close enough. Sorry Uri! But you still have the tapes. That'll be worth something one day.

As with most documentaries about Michael Jackson, this held your interest - documentaries about endlessly fascinating fuck ups will do that. But Geller is such an unbelievable turd that you found yourself gagging on his pious self-serving commentary.

Realistically, we shouldn't be surprised. The Michael Jackson industry is peopled by liars lying - peddling a version of a story they know to be false. When you put it like that you realise that Geller is maybe the best person on the face of the earth to front such a circus.

The verdict on My Friend Michael Jackson: Much what you expected.

Marks out of 10: 7

Take That... for the Record

The 5th most popular member of Take That laughed like Brian Blessed as he tried to remember if he had sexual intercourse with Lulu. “If I did I don’t remember - I’m a gentleman!” - it’s more likely you were stupendously pissed, Jason. “If Lulu says I’ve give her one and she says I was great that’s fine by me”. Oh I bet it is you dirty fecker.

Success is relative. Jason is the least popular member of the most successful British band since The Beatles. He’s endured sex with Lulu but he also gets more ass in a month than most guys get in their life.

Such paradoxes littered Take That... for the Record - part reflection, part reunion for the five Northern lads who shook the world with their sussed pop and dead fit arses. Marking the tenth anniversary of their split, it seemed fitting.

It took them from early years of boot camp choreography, whipping the tubby Gary Barlow (third most popular member of Take That) into shape, through playing the gay clubs and the first TV appearances all the way through to world domination and the inevitable bust-ups that followed.

Robbie Williams, the second most popular member of Take That, had a tortured relationship with manager Nigel Martin Smith. “He’s definitely in the top three most disturbed individuals I’ve worked with.” And Rob’s worked with crazy bastards like Kylie Minogue so you know he was wild. Smith seemed bemused by Williams’ antipathy but Robbie insisted “I only ever wanted him to love me. That’s the really sad thing. And he never did.”

Robbie also had a tortured relationship with Gary Barlow. It seemed there was only room for one songwriter in the band and that had to be the more experienced Barlow. Jealousies and post-split rivalries abounded. You want to dislike Barlow, hoping he’s careerist industry scum but he comes across as a nice enough lad like the rest of them. Robbie takes things awfully personally, you suspect.

The shocking (i.e. not shocking at all) drug use was also covered. Robbie, shivering in bed because he’d been up all night with a certain international model drinking champagne and taking cocaine. In a totally unconnected story, it was revealed recently that Robbie was secretly dating Naomi Campbell for a year. Que vida.

“There was a time when I became too powerful. ‘I can’t be sacked now - let’s do drugs’” he deadpans.

Williams is the most interesting, most successful and least happy of the group. Even by celebrity standards, he seems desperately in need of approval. His engagingly open manner set the tone for the boy band confessional.

And it was his departure which really spelled the end for the group - a crippling body blow after which they staggered on for a year but, as Mark willingly acknowledged, it never felt the same without Robbie.

When the split came it came as a relief for the boys. All except for Howard Donald, fourth most popular member of Take That, who left his hotel room to jump into the Thames. “I wanted to kill myself but I’m just too much of a shitbag to do it”. If only Richey Edwards had such insight.

It was fascinating to see how the boys had spent their time since the split. Howard hasn’t pursued the suicide route, preferring to record his own album “which is, in my eyes, a great album” - yep, and in Helen Keller’s eyes also. “We just didn’t end up releasing it” which, on the face of it, seems a curious oversight.

He showed us clips of the unreleased single “Speak Without Words” (“it was an amazing single. It really was an amazing single”). Yeah alright Howard, we get the message - you’re great but nobody loves you.

Gary the Gunt has been raising a family with his wife Dawn, a former Take That dancer. He seems happy in his gigantic mansion surrounded by gold discs, oil paintings and smiling kids.

Dim-witted pretty boy Mark, most popular member of Take That, has moved to The Lakes to walk through streams and ponder how he spends all his cash. After a brief spell back in the spotlight winning Celebrity Big Brother, he’s currently writing music for a film.

Jason Orange, has been back to college to “do some courses” which I think is a capital idea. He’s also done some backpacking and been pondering stuff. He didn’t mention his brief appearance as a DJ in Lynda La Plante’s criminally underrated Killer Net which is a shame as I really liked that (everyone else thinks it’s shite).

The reunion itself felt slightly awkward with Robbie not turning up. He sent a video apologising to all the members individually - telling Howard, Mark and Jason what nice guys they are. And while he didn’t go so far as to call Barlow a nice guy he apologised for calling him a crap songwriter.

Williams explained the insult by saying he had his head up his own arse at the time and wanted to be in Oasis which, as excuses go, beats the crap out of ‘‘the dog ate my homework”.

Would Robbie swap all he had for The Life of Barlow? “14 Brits?” he howled “Fuck off!” before conceding “No, in all seriousness I would swap everything I have for that.”

It goes to show that you can have the girls, the drugs and the acclaim but it’s simple old domesticity that the lonely pop-star wants. Expect a double disc concept album on that very theme sometime soon.

The verdict on Take That... for the Record: “Lulu was the best piece of ass I’ve ever had and I’ve had ‘em all over the world. SHAZZAM!”

Marks out of 10: 7.5

When Fearne Met Peaches

Four years ago, Aerial Telly wrote a sympathetic piece about Peaches Geldof and her attempt to get under the skin of teenage America. He’s the kind of guy who tries to see the good in everyone and wished nothing but the best for this young pup who had been through her share of trauma. Yet Aerial Telly is not a clairvoyant - he just seems like one because of his phenomenal success with betting. It was not for him to foresee the shell of a woman Peaches Geldof would become. When Fearne Met Peaches is the second in a series of shows where a vacuous nobody meets another vacuous nobody, does nothing, then films it. It’s what television was invented for.

Fearne Cotton, following Geldof around like a deranged ment, sets the scene. “She’s grabbed headlines for her whirlwind marriage, her many tattoos and rumours about her spirituality” Eh? If you say so. Fearne wants to get to know the real Peaches. Problem is, the real Peaches is something of a shithead. She is desperate to get across that she’s really intelligent, reads books and thinks about stuff but the horrible little madam who believes she is entitled to the world and everything in it surfaces at every opportunity.

It starts early on. She greets Fearne dressed like a prostitute and neither of them seem to know what to do. “Hello everyone” she says to the crew who do not respond in keeping with the conventions of documentary making. OMFG! Peaches is pissed. “Can I not introduce myself or are you going to just stick a camera in my face right now?” You agreed to this you fucking moron. You can’t get enough of the cameras in your face. You actively court it with everything you do, say and are. Shut the fuck up.

Fearne asks tough questions like “What do you think about the haters out there who don’t know who you are and don’t know anything about you?” When following Peaches round during her “work” for Nylon magazine she trails behind her like an Arab’s wife. Peaches does vox pops in the streets for the magazine, asking questions like “Do you like them to hang low up your ass?” in a ludicrous American accent. “I like awkwardness” she tells Cotton “I find awkward silences really interesting”. Must be a fucking interesting life then as there's no shortage of those here.

It probably should be said that Fearne Cotton is not very bright. “I must admit I’m really impressed with Peaches’ presenting style”. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it doesn’t take much to impress Fearne. “It’s not true that Peaches doesn’t work and that she hasn’t got talent - she was great on the streets just now”. Well, she certainly dressed for the part.

Fearne has seen the 2-hours-a-week journalist but wants to see Peaches the Party Girl (i.e. what she is famous for) so she brings an expensive bottle of champagne round to her apartment. “That’s kind of intense” says Peaches, dispensing with such pleasantries as “thank you” and then pisses off to her friends with Cotton tagging along dragging her unopened bottle behind her. “I don’t party in New York” Peaches tells her.

But of course she’s lying. Peaches goes out on the razz without Fearne which is horribly rude, petulant and cunty. The following morning, as Fearne tries to sympathise over the pressures of fame, Peaches interrupts and says “you know what I’m intrigued by? Space... wormholes, Stephen Hawking’s theories and Richard Dawkins’ theories”. Oh, she’s deep this one. There is nothing more depressing in this world than the stupid person who believes they are intelligent.

And she’s a Scientologist now. Well of course she is. Scientology - that lying bullying haven for the spiritually barren, emotionally crippled, control freak bastard offspring of the famous was practically invented for Peaches Geldof.

“I’m beginning to feel that Peaches doesn’t really want me here” says Fearne as Geldof disappears on her for the 45th time in two days which, again, is kind of rude given that she’s only doing her job and, it bears repeating, Geldof agreed to do this bollocks.

So who is the real Peaches Geldof? Spoilt little rich girl, pampered twat, deluded fucknut, no-talent shitheel, coke snorting goon, world’s worst groupie and history’s least attractive underwear model.

She really doesn’t come out of this very well

The verdict on When Fearne Met Peaches: Vacant to a frightening degree.

Marks out of 10: 4

British drama: Can you handle the Loof?

Powered by history's greatest broadcast network, the BBC, British drama could once legitimately claim world pwnage but it is now very much the boss-eyed stepchild of marauding American dramas with their 22 episode seasons, swear-if-we-want-to subscription ethic and (as if to rub it all in) British acting talent. And yet every now and again Britain remembers how to do drama as if some genetic memory exists from her colonial past when Britannia ruled the airwaves, kitchen sink realism called the tune and The Singing Detective was the pound-for-pound king.

Sherlock shows how it should be done while This Is England '86 shows how it really shouldn't (although some dummies will give anything a good review if there's some northern halfwits and period detail in it).

The talent is still there. America need not rule forever. One day Britain will rise again and all will quake before her.

Worried About the Boy

About halfway through Worried About the Boy, the Boy George story, George (Douglas Booth) asks Jon Moss (Mathew Horne) to repeat after him: “I'm a talentless dwarf Jew and I've made a pile of money riding on your coat tails.” In similar vein I'd like every New Romantic to repeat after me: “I'm a turd. Nothing I say or do means a thing. I ruined music for everyone. The cultural holocaust of the 80s was my fault. Kill me. It's all I deserve.”

Yeah, you Blitz Kids really changed everything didn't you? In your own minds at least. New Romantics - so proud of their legacy. Presiding over the most hateful, barren, poisonous period in our recent cultural history they rarely need much persuading to talk at length about how important they were and generally affect an air more closely associated with D-Day veterans. Never in the field of human cuntflict have so many owed so little to so few. I could give a tuppenny fuck about their desperate music, laughable fashion, nimrod posturing and care even less about who they were screwing. Not that nobody caring ever stopped them.

There's some appropriate casting, though, as the role of Steve Strange, a musician no-one of consequence cares about, goes to Marc Warren, an actor no-one of consequence cares about. He still sounds exactly like Danny from Hustle or that schlub he played in Mutual Friends. He may look like Malcolm McDowell but, trust, whoever he plays he's always Marc Warren.

The parade of early 80s shitbirds goes on: Marilyn (who, incidentally, these days looks like Shaun Ryder after losing an argument with a bottle of Domestos), no account “associate” of Gavin Rossdale was played by Freddie Fox and for one brief glorious moment I thought it was Freddie “Bumpy Knuckles” Foxxx. I'd sell tickets to that all day.

The attempt to recreate the 80s is not exactly painstaking. Some graffiti that says: THE SPECIALS is followed apologetically in smaller letters by THE BEAT. No Monsoon? Toto Coelo? It does look a little like they bashed it out in an afternoon.

They don't really get into how the New Romantics took the music of Bowie, Lou Reed and Kraftwerk and, with it, fashioned a sculpture of pure shite. There's an impressive cameo from Mark Gatiss playing that dead paedophile fuckpig Malcolm McLaren. Making airy fairy hand gestures and talking like a cunt passed for cultural credibility in those days.

The Camden nightclub Blitz was quite difficult to get in to but so is Miley Cyrus's snatch and I don't see you making a fucking film about that. Steve “Smackhead” Strange recently said “The best move I made was turning Mick Jagger away at the door.” Yeah, you wouldn't want anyone of cultural significance ruining your turd-fest would you?

Seriously - fuck the 80s but fuck the revivalism a lot harder. Bow Wow Wow, Spandau Ballet, Marilyn, Visage, Robert Elms and walking behind David Bowie on Southend beach, looking like a cunt, bulldozer in hot pursuit. That's your legacy. GTFO of here.

The verdict on Worried About the Boy: Frankly, I think you lack insight.

Marks out of 10: 5

This is England '86

Three years after Shane Meadows convinced the world 1980s England consisted of friendly skinheads roaming the subways adopting waifs and strays and schools filled with children dressed like Boy George, his crew of East Midlands blockheads are back for more revisionist cultural history. Living hell on earth, in other words.

That means brain holocaust Woody is back, his wedding to the terminally dopey LOL! tragically curtailed when he forgets how the “I do” part goes. Joining him is Milky, apparently suffering no ill effects from getting his skull caved in that time by Combo (sounds like the shoeing may have actually added a couple of IQ points). Slow learner Our Shaun is still sniffing around girl gump Smell and you can only imagine the brood of incessantly chirpy 'tards that coupling may one day spawn.

Because everyone here is dumb but spirited, all pulling together for the common good. Lovable racists Banjo, Meggy and Gadge are here being lovable, presumably having put their paki bashing in the original film behind them. No explanation is sought or offered: flipping 'eck, calm down mate, have a brew!

It's hard to stomach these nodding unquestioning Stepford Proles. Nobody, not even Richturd Spurtis, uses sentimentality as brutally as Lame Credblows - the uncontested unimpeachable Duke of Mawk.

Be thick but essentially goodhearted and you're very welcome in Meadowsland. Show any ambition beyond marrying the local skank and working in the post office and Meadows is not interested. The This Is England franchise is a shrine to stupidity, accepting your lot and being exactly who you are expected to be. Its cultural legacy is an endorsement of the status quo, a denial of punk and an admission of defeat.

The poverty of aspiration of the characters is mirrored by Meadows' stunted vision. Happy to wallow in a career-long homage to the well-meaning but thick, he stays put. Say what you like about Paul Abbott's Shameless but he made sure it had the spirited Fiona, the brilliant Debbie and the boy genius Liam - kids who had magic in them, frustrated not defeated by their circumstances. Meadows just fetishises failure.

Of course, This Is England '86 will be critically acclaimed as gritty, authentic and honest - everything it is not. Every Meadows escapade ends up the same - time in the mire with the people who grinned themselves to death.

The verdict on This is England '86: In its own way, as bad as the real 80s were.

Marks out of 10: 4

Luther

It’s funny how life works out. One minute you’re allowing a murdering paedophile to fall to what you hope is his death, the next you’re all suspended, tending your garden as police brass wait for him to come out of his coma and finger you as the reckless makes-his-own-rules paedo killer they always suspected you might be. DCI John Luther (Idris Elba) is the brilliant yet tortured cop and Henry Madsen (Anton Saunders) the cunty yet comatose serial killer whose survival looms over this show like Roman Polanski over a drugged teenage girl. In an entirely predictable twist, Luther is separated from his hot wife Zoe (Indira Varma) who is now shagging Mark North (Paul McGann), human rights lawyer, responsibly sourced borefriend and all-round pain-in-the-balls liberal piece of shit. A good cop show needs to be more than the sum of its clichés and you know what? This is a good cop show.

A brilliant policeman consumed by his work, perpetually going rogue, pining like a cuntstruck teen after his ex wife. We’ve been here before. And of course he’s Sherlock Holmes, Patrick Jane, Gregory House and every other gifted yet flawed detective you care to think of. He’s always right, except when he’s wrong and even then he’s on the right lines.

He’s backed up to the higgedy hilt by his pal DCI Ian Reed (Steven Mackintosh, weary from playing 400,000 indistinguishable cops and criminals on ITV prime-time clinkers) who loves him but is often exasperated by his methods. Further support comes from his guv’nor DSU Rose Teller (Saskia Reeves channelling Eastenders one-of-your-own Carol Jackson) who respects him but is often exasperated by his methods. His method gives them madness y’ken.

In the first episode Luther cottons on that newly orphaned braniac Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson) is the real murderer of her parents in the home invasion execution scenario she set up. But Morgan is good. Really good. Too smart for our hero, in fact, and you can’t afford to waste a character like that in just one episode so her role becomes crucial in the series.

When vexed Luther can’t pin anything on Alice, she walks and becomes a Hannibal Lecter style confidante for John as he wrestles with his conscience, his personal life and the bizarrely dark compelling murders that inevitably come his way. Yeah, fuck her parents - let’s have some Batman/Joker “I didn’t make you - you made me!” style psychodrama instead.

She’s a Nietzschean antihero and Wilson is terrific in the role. With her PhD in astrophysics, edumacation and tricknology she’s more than an intellectual match for the cerebral plod - constantly forcing Luther to question his conception of right and wrong and exactly how different he is from her.

She wants him to put his cock in her and there’s little doubt the feeling is mutual. But with her menacing Zoe, paying teenage girls to happy slap the shitsack borefriend and generally being a full-on menkle it’s likely this will be a very bad idea. So you just know he’s going to go there at some point.

Meanwhile, his attempts to win back Zoe involve him turning up to her home at unsocial hours, punching the walls then attacking Paul McGann who is starting to look a bit HIV these days, as if being bitch slapped by Vicky Pollards, cheated on by Zoe and roughed up by Luther isn’t enough.

It is a good show, though. Luther is an engaging character and Idris Elba is an ever-charismatic presence. It’s Mad Alice who really makes the mundane magic though. She’s yampy as they come and having her as a lover will be no less dangerous than having her as an enemy. She’s as cold as ice but is she willing to sac-ri-fice her love? Can a soulless beast like her even experience love? Luther better pray she can or he may well meet the same fate as Stringer Bell.

The verdict on Luther: Cracker meets Monkfish.

Marks out of 10: 7.5

Luther Series One finale

OK, so where have we got to? Paedo in a coma woke up and shouted “Luttt-TTTTTHER!” Fred Flintstone style, apparently with enough brain activity to tell the Federales that Loofs had let him slip to his doom. This was always a bit of a red herring. No witnesses, no incriminating forensics, just the word of a serial killer baby rapist with a mashed brain against a distinguished if plainly nuts detective. In any case, Mad Alice killed Henry Madsen before he could start singing. She’s taken quite a shine to Loofs which came in handy in the finale as John “this doesn’t add up” Luther, framed for his wife’s murder and on the lam, seeks to clear his name and put a punching and a crunching on the real murderer, his former BFF, DCI Ian Reed who’s been balls-deep in diamonds and corruption for the longest time. Got time for another 60 minutes of pushing, shouting and Juliet Bravo clichés? DO I? Yeah, I do zappens.

Luther is mad vexed. You thought you’d seen him mad when he demolished the lounge room door when Zoe taped over Police, Camera, Action! or turned his office into powdered dust like Ben Grimm The Thing when the photocopier jammed but no. Now his wife’s been killed, he’s in the frame so yes - he’s proper miffed right now. As he cradled his murdered wife in his arms and the armed units closed in, he realised what a gwan. “Oh Ian, Ian, Ian - what have you done?” He’s framed you John, John, John - GTFO of there. So with the quickness he was dipping up the block like Biggie in Gimme the Loot. Scattoh!

First thing to do is steal the incriminating gun from Ripley by car-jacking him then punching him in the tits. He does this with the help of Mad “what’s her game?” Alice who then kidnaps Zoe’s borefriend Mark North (Paul McGann). Mark, when presented with Luther, does the shouty, pushy, kick and shove “MURDERER!” thing only to be placated when Loofs tells him he never done it. Now all he has to do is get Mark to commit grand larceny and pervert the course of justice by stealing the diamonds from Ian’s locker. Mark is all “OK boss” because he was putting his cock in Zoe as well and will now never get a chance to again thanks to “Ian” and his “locker”. By which I mean his “brutal killing of Zoe who Mark was fucking in his own depressing, inept, apologetic, Amnesty International way”

It all ends up with a stand-off between Ian and Loofs. “You want the Loof?” says John “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE LOOF!”1 while monologuing about how killing is just bad m’kay. Keen to live out the last scene of Se7en, Ian tries to goad the armed Luther into plugging him by talking about how he was putting his cock in Zoe along with the South African Rugby XV, Max “19, hits the road” Gogarty, Paul “Celebrity Love Island” Danan and Steve “former Brighton manager” Gritt. When Luther refuses Ian pulls out a knife and gut stabs him then starts kicking him up and down the platform screaming “Look what you made me do!” which is a bit rich all things considered. None of it ends well of course because cackling Mad “she’s crazy!” Alice rolls up in this piece and shoots Ian in the tits at point-blank with a 400,000 bore shotgun blowing his chest cavity open. Dervish with a smile. Diamond Shite is wormfood.

So with the Feds closing in, Luther has the dead body of his wife’s killer, his homicidal platonic Nietzschean mistress donned in a knitted beret holding a smoking gun and a grieving liberal piece of shit looking more “Withnail” than “I”. Fade to black.

It’s been an odd little series - hysterical, noisy, often formulaic. It’s the relationship between Luther and Mad Alice that saves it. That sexual frisson, that intellectual ping-pong, that Easy Silence between them, where both are safe in the knowledge they are exactly as brilliant and batshit crazy as each other.

Series two needs to put more work into the monsters of the week as they have mainly been as dull and insipid as real-life murderers. But while Loofs and Alice continue their 2010 Bonnie and Clyde double act it will remain a necessary evil on the viewing schedule.

The verdict on Luther Series One finale: They said he was nitroglycerine but I wasn’t listening.

Marks out of 10: 7.5

1 May not resemble actual scene.

Sherlock

Culture being the omnivorous regurgitating shitbird it is, certain motifs recur with alarming frequency. Rogue cop (blates), vampire lust (again and again); and then there’s The Sherlock, that guy who just knows. It might be Gregory House, Patrick Jane, Cracker or it could be the original Sherlock Holmes of Baker St, That London. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have alchemized a very modern Holmes here but one who doesn’t really seem attached to any time or place. Benedict Cumberbatch plays our hero, looking like a twitchy, caffeine-starved Ron Mael. Holmes has an ill-defined role as consultant to the police, much like The Mentalist and just like every tragic Sherlock since Conan Doyle first penned A Study in Scarlet he’s doomed to walk the earth bereft of women like an Aerial Telly reader or Guardian blog commentscum. Not that there isn’t a love of his life. There’s always his Watson (Martin Freeman).

Darling Watson! Yin to his yang, Tina to his Ike, Constance to his Mellors. Did two men ever love each other more? These guys need to get a room. 221b Baker Street to be exact. Few platonic male friendships have been subject to as much speculative homoerotic fan fiction as Holmes and Watson and Sherlock makes no great effort to distance itself from that. Introduced by a mutual friend as potential flatmates, they spend much of the first episode being mistaken as a gay couple then mistakenly thinking the other is hitting on them. It’s a fairly cheap way to get your giggles but no less funny.

And this is a funny Holmes, wisecracking and sussed, as bold and contemporary as the technology he surrounds himself with. Does text messaging seem like some canonical heresy, Holmes lover? Well, you’re shit out of luck if so because this Holmes texts more than a tweener with a Justin Bieber jones. One-word round robins to crime hacks, teasing come-hithers to Watson and shameless flirting with this week’s murderer - the one causing all those suicides.

Yeah, because those identical suicides the (naturally useless) police can’t make head nor tail of are being facilitated by one Fred Houseblow, psycho cabbie to conflicted salt-of-the-earths across the capital. Holmes gets to the bottom of this after a series of patented Sherlock Scans (he intuits a victim was unhappily married and took a string of lovers from a cursory once over) and is soon throwing himself in danger’s path because, man alive, it’s dull when you’re this brilliant in a world this boring.

Thankfully, being brilliant comes easily to the show and Sherlock is everything it should be. Witty, compelling and literate; respectful of the source material without slavishly replicating it, all the while adding its own cinnamon twists. Moffat doesn’t get much wrong and, slightly clinky pantomime-esque turn from Gatiss as Mycroft Holmes aside, he knocks this out of the park. Beenadick Cumdumpsnatch is charismatic and eerily focused, getting that 'moving through the earth without being part of it' air just right.

Also just right is the chemistry between Freeman and Cumdumpsnatch. Freeman is often impressed, frequently baffled but never overawed. He loves him too much for tawdry fanboy antics. And John really does <3 Sherlock. When Holmes wins, he wins. His triumph splashed over him, like love forty-nine times magnified.1

The verdict on Sherlock: I can’t really do the lemon entry one again, can I?

Marks out of 10: 8

1 Apologies to Ted Hughes (and Sylvia Plath)

Sherlock finale: The Great Game

What, in the name of the crucified Christ, was all that Hong Kong phooey shit about? Sherlock’s second episode, the ching-chong themed The Blind Banker was eye-wateringly poor and bafflingly so after such a great first episode. It looked like the show had been hijacked by Bonekickers, may as well have had Mister Wu from Deadwood narrating for all the sense it made and don’t get me started on the Inspector Clouseau vs Cato style kung poo. Sherlock had 90 minutes to redeem itself Sunday night and The Great Game not only matched the opener but surpassed it with a taut, chilling and exhilarating climax that secured it a slam-dunk second season, universal acclaim and the slutty boho underwear model of Beenadick Cumdumpsnatch’s choice whenever he decides to take advantage of the nationwide oestrogen-fuelled gal boner all but poking his eye out as we speak.

It all starts with that pious square Mycroft trying to get bruv to investigate the death of MI5 lollygagger Andrew “Westie” West, found with his skull caved in and a top-secret defence data flash drive missing. Take a hike, Myc - brother Sherlock has other things on his mind. Baker Street is hit by a huge explosion which 221b survives while sustaining a fair few broken windows. It looks like a gas leak but a strong box containing a package for Sherlock suggests this was no accident. Game on, Detective.

Said package contains a mobile phone with a picture of 221c Baker Street, Holmes’s basement (coincidentally, Watson’s name for his arse). Upon speeding to the basement Holmes discovers a pair of trainers neatly arranged for his inspection. His mobile rings. A terrified woman with a shitload of Semtex strapped to her tits reads out a message from a mystery tormenturd. Solve the riddle of the trainers or the skank is wormfood, being the upshot. You’ve got 12 hours old boy and Holmes is all “No problem at all - should be time for a spot of billiards after that, what-what?” as Watson sweats like Jonathan King at a Menudo gig.

Still, work to be done and quick-as-a-fish Holmes is dipping up the block to St. Bart’s laboratory to run some tests on the Trainers of Doom. In an entirely unrelated and random happenstance lab bod Molly, who wants Holmes to put his cock in her, introduces her new borefriend Jim the lab technician who Holmes quickly surmises is a flaming gay because of his immaculate grooming and visible underwear. “Good golly” says Molly “He sure likes to ball” but deep down she knows there’s about as much chance of Sherlock being wrong about this as Peaches Geldof being right about anything.

After ruining her day Sherlock deduces that the trainers belong to Carl Powers, a schoolkid from 1989 whose death Sherlock always thought was suspicious. He puts it to mystery turdmentor that Powers was poisoned by his asthma medication and turdmentor rewards him by setting the exploding skank free but he’s far from finished with Holmes. Three more riddles quickly follow and the same format applies. Innocent salt strapped with TNT gets blown to a million tiny pieces if Sherlock doesn’t solve the case before the deadline. Some geniuses would wilt under this pressure but Sherlock? Can’t get enough of it.

That’s right folks. He loves them all. The broker who faked his own death to collect life insurance; the celebrity makeup artist Botoxed to death by her gay brother’s shagsack housekeeper and most of all the art gallery security guard murdered for rumbling a £30 million new Vermeer as a fake.

Securitard had his ticket punched by an assassin called The Golem (played by 7 foot 3 acturd John Lebar) and Watson and Holmes track him down just as he murders a professor who had also twigged the £30 million forgery - nice timing fuckheads. They tussle with the gigantic goon in an icy set-to before the freak makes his escape.

After that it’s back to the gallery where Holmes collars the curator on the fraud and gets Hostage of the Day (some infant fuck) off the hook with some lightning art criticism. Unlike Holmes, the curator cracks under the pressure and gives them the name of a mysterious benefactor behind the forgery: Moriarty. Make a note of it, tell your friends etc

But by Holmes’s reckoning (five pips message on the mobile phone in the strong box package indicating five cases) there is still one case for him to solve. He laterally intuits it is the MI5 lollygagger with the cracked skull and the missing flash drive his pain in the balls brother has been pissing in his ear about the entire episode. Imagine!

Turns out Pestie ran his mouth in the pub, had his flash drive nicked by his girlfriend’s brother then got accidentally killed in confronting said brother. Ah well. One oblique post to his website later and Holmes sets up a rendezvous with his mysterious nemesis in the swimming pool where Carl Powers died.

Greeting him there is Watson with a load of Semtex strapped to his tits, talking like a fag, with his shit all retarded^1. For Watson has been got to by evil Professor Jim Moriarty (Andrew Scott) and get this: it’s only gay Jim from the laboratory! Who saw that coming? (Unusually for him, Aerial Telly did).

It turns out gay Jim not only isn’t a lab technician but isn’t gay and has been playing the mindfuck game with Sherlock to show him exactly how badass he is and to back the hell off all his future criminal spectaculars. Yeah, like that’s gonna happen. Moriarty monologues about his own brilliance, the nature of good and evil and Sherlock’s lovely, lovely hair and it all ends with an intriguing cliffhanger with Sherlock and John about to be snipered out of existence and Sherlock about to shoot the explosives vest right into Moriarty. How you like them apples?

What a fantastic triumph for Gatiss after what many considered a below par Doctor Who Daleks episode. Perhaps more impressively, he has been named the 38th most influential homosexual in Britain, though, if all the gay premiership footballers came out he would be relegated to around 538. Still, with him and Steven Moffat running the show you feel the franchise is in safe hands.

The verdict on Sherlock finale: The Great Game: Excellent finish after the mid-season lull.

Marks out of 10: 9

1 cf. Idiocracy

EastEnders

Man, were they ever pleased with themselves? Like a child cleaning up its mess then looking to mommy for congratulations, the BBC conveniently forgot that if they hadn’t screwed things up by inviting Leslie Grantham back into EastEnders in the first place they wouldn’t be tying themselves in knots finding ways to get rid of him.

So his exit had an even bigger fanfare than his re-entry. The twice-nightly trailers featured the three wronged women of Albert Square - dopey Zoe, Sam “dumb even by Mitchell standards” Mitchell and the brains of the outfit Chrissie, every inch the black widow with her corkscrew curls and smacked-arse face.

In black cocktail dresses under moody lighting, striking Greta Garbo poses, the clueless trio addressed the camera “For every scam he’s pulled... for every time he’s lied, twisted and manipulated... It’s payback.”

Right. Thanks for that. I’d hate to think I’d missed something.

The whole ‘Den returns’ project was based on a myth anyway. The myth that EastEnders was better in the old days under our Tony and Julia. Series creators Tony Holland and Julia Smith, the story went, treated the show like their own child.

Indeed they did - and what a flabby, spoilt, over-indulged brat early EastEnders was. Social issues crowbarred in with no regard for plot, character or viewer sanity, all set against a rotten combination of cloying sentimentality and unremitting misery.

So back Den came and now he had to go and it was The Witches of Eastwick who would do for him. It all started out promisingly enough. There was genuine tension created as the storyline unfolded but it kept on being undermined by the colossal stupidity of Sam Mitchell and behaviour from Zoe so out of character she was turned into a walking plot device for the writers. An attractive young woman sleeps with a 70 year-old internet pervert she despises. Yeah cool story, broseph.

Meanwhile, The Andy Hunter/Moon family feud concluded with Andy doing a back-flip off a motorway bridge helped by Don Beech from The Bill. I thought everyone knew not to fuck with Don Beech? Never mind, this is Albert Square after all.

The root of the feud was the love triangle between Alfie, Andy and Fat Kat Slater, Albert Square’s finest beauty - a cross between Foghorn Leghorn and Tubbs from the League of Gentlemen.

Den’s sticky end finally came with getting his cranium cracked by a dog-shaped doorstop owned by Pauline Fowler, a nice touch of pathos slightly spoiled by the ham-fisted foreshadowing. Not since Pete Beale has an inanimate object received so much attention - they may as well have written “I Kill Den, Me” in metallic marker on the dog’s forehead and have done with it.

Now that this sorry episode is over, can EastEnders recover? They will come up with something - they always do. When not getting bogged down in such stupidity EastEnders produces some priceless soap moments. The problem is that after such a balls up, the public will be slow to trust them again. And do you blame them?

For all the wack plots, bum lines and blank stares. For every time the scriptwriter has gone off message and on the pipe.... it’s payback.

The verdict on EastEnders: You’re having a larf intcha? You’re NUFFING you muppet!

Marks out of 10: 5

Skins Season 2

So what’s new in season two? Tony is out of his coma, Maxxie has a stalker, the boring one gets pregnant and Sid and Cassie split up causing Cassie to tailspin into a dark night of drugs and casual sex. Illustrating this on the E4 Skins site there is a video entitled “Cassie swaps sides”. Click on it and you see “Warning! This clip contains strong language and adult themes”. No it doesn’t, fucknut. It contains two pretty girls kissing which is the only reason anybody will be watching. Naturally, this was written because the script writers wanted to see Hannah Murray, the actress who plays Cassie, walking around in her underwear, kissing girls and having casual sex so they can put it on the E4 microsite. And who can blame them? Why, Aerial Telly of course. You’re scriptwriters not pornographers you filthy fuckers.

Skins has, of course, prided itself on introducing young scriptwriters into the mix. One of these bum fluff cultivating chodes Max Gogarty recently took a prolonged ass fucking from the Guardian blog pod people after his hastily written “Max, 19, hits the road” blog went live. Accusations of nepotism abounded when someone pointed out that Paul Gogarty, Max’s father, also wrote for the Guardian from time to time. Aerial Telly felt a little sorry for Max. He was once 19 himself and he was a stupid bastard then as well. Much of the venom came from wannabe writers whose dream job is publishing their god-awful dribblings on the Guardian website. Nonetheless, the blog did suck quite a lot of cock and reflected badly on Skins.

But Skins has to have young scriptwriters, right? Because they know what’s relevant to the kids. So you sacrifice good drama for that abysmal tyrant ‘relevance’. A lot of the show’s problems stem from this. Skins tries way too hard to be cool and ends up looking ridiculous in the process. It doesn’t know what it wants to be. Season 2 kicks off with a contemporary dance set piece in a church. Then it spends much of its time thinking it’s a farce yet it still wants to deal seriously with issues like bulimia, bereavement and pupil-teacher relationships.

Its complete inability to portray a grown-up who is not a grotesque caricature of everything vile about humanity is just laughable. No wonder Harry Enfield is so comfortable in his role as Tony’s dad. Loadsamoney was an understated study of the nouveau riche in comparison. This approach is patronising to its younger audience and sick-making to its older audience. It can’t help feeling like The Young Ones’ young adult show - Nozin Around. “Hey man, grownups are squares yeah?” Did you ever see that in the great American teen dramas Buffy, My So-Called Life, Veronica Mars? The fuck you did.

I’m not really sure what Skins is for. It’s not like it's bad most of the time but when it is bad, it’s practically unwatchable.

The verdict on Skins Season 2: Needs work. And to grow up a little bit.

Marks out of 10: 6

Gong intermission

Aerial Telly Awards 2007

In a year that saw him further consolidate his grip on the worlds of gambling, writing and poon hounding Aerial Telly is proud to roll out his awards ceremony for the year of 2007. Stars from the world of showbiz throw themselves out of limousines in the hope of gaining validation from the world’s premiere authority on the vision that is telly. Most will never receive it - he is notoriously hard to please. But for those lucky chosen few their lives are changed forever - you really can’t buy this kind of career tonic. So let’s get things underway and talk about what you should have been watching when you were going through your girl’s mobile for evidence of infidelity.

Best show: 30 Rock, NBC

You thought the show within a show had been done to death and 30 Rock showed you exactly how dead wrong you were. An object lesson in how sitcom should be conceptualised, scripted and performed, Tina Fey’s brilliant creation showcased a previously unexplored comic talent in daughter baiting Alec Baldwin as deranged studio boss Jack Donaghy.

Worst show: The Peter Serafinowicz Show, BBC2

He had talent and BBC threw money at it like it was a Vegas lap dancer - so why did it suck so very hard? Well Watson, it must always come down to the writing. Ideas so old they needed carbon dating, feeble running gags and, yes, Cillit Bang parodies meant that the show was on to a loser from the start. Even the glorious pie of Belinda Stewart-Wilson couldn’t mask the fact that the BBC were wasting more energy than Freddie Ljungberg’s girlfriend.

Best performance by a male: Michael K. Williams as Omar Little - The Wire

The Wire achieved what many thought impossible this year and made the fourth season the best yet and at the heart of it was Michael K. Williams’s turn as Omar Little, the gay stick-up kid who never swears, shoots citizens or gets caught slipping. In a jail full of guys who want him dead, Omar stabs the first guy who tries to kill him in the rectum for everyone to see. As statements of intent go, that’s as pointed as they come and Williams’s understated presence and charisma give an already strong character mythic status.

Best performance by a female: Tina Fey as Liz Lemon, 30 Rock

Not only did she create the year’s best show, Tina Fey also put in the best performance by a dame as socially inept comic writer Liz Lemon. Fey bases Liz largely on herself and her unflinching portrayal of the “New York third-wave feminist, college-educated, single-and-pretending-to-be-happy-about-it, overscheduled, undersexed, you buy any magazine that says ‘healthy body image’ on the cover and every two years you take up knitting for...a week.” type. The Lemon Pie is brave, engaging and most of all very funny.

TV pie of the year: Katrina Bowden, 30 Rock

Always the category Aerial Telly agonises over hardest, TV pie of the year was once again fiercely competitive. Pielinda Stewart-Wilson set an almost impossible pace as the thinking man’s Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Pieter Serafinowicz Show, smouldering quietly through one duff sketch after another and the return to our screens of diminutive but curvy Scottish pie Laura Fraser in Talk To Me was hugely appreciated and the sight of the lovely Mary Louise Pierker from Weeds getting fucked doggy style over a desk like the bad little milfpie she is resonated with sane viewers everywhere. But it was Katrina Bowden as Cerie, 30 Rock’s effervescently vacant intern slutting it up round the NBC offices that got the nod for 2007. This award instantly raises her modelling rate by $10,000 a day. No problem Katrina - you can “thank” me later.

TV Event Of The Year: Lost Season Three Finale (SPOILERS, bitches)

It will always have its critics but man does this show know how to pull the big episodes out of its ass? In season three’s stunning denouement they killed Charlie, reintroduced Walt and got off the fricking island. For all its dips in form and annoyances, Lost continues to be a triumph of the imagination and walking proof that populist television needn’t be brainless or condescending.

“What the fuck was that?” award - John From Cincinnati, HBO

We make allowances for geniuses and that’s presumably how John From Cincinnati got past the drawing board stages. The wilfully impenetrable religious allegory had Deadwood fans scratching their heads and casual viewers scratching their nuts. The decision not to order a second series was one of the less surprising commissioning decisions of the past 12 months. Candidly, I don’t think even Milch knew what this was about.

Empty gesture of the year: Preston’s Walk Out on Never Mind The Buzzcocks

In this show of adolescent rage as futile as his laughable condescending project to save his “wife” Chantelle Houghton from her chav dreams, the media whore’s attention seeking defence of his “wife” was shown up for what it was a couple of months later when she ditched him, dyed her hair blonde again and had a load of toxic shit stuck in her tits to make her look like the exact same identikit China Whites Nuts magazine cocksucker that he was so desperate to stop her becoming in the first place. Well done fucknut.

And goodnight.

Reality isn’t real: reality TV and the scum sucking rat bastards who participate

For some time it was possible to defend reality TV. It was a bold, entertaining experiment and could engage the audience in a way a lot of other cheap-to-make TV simply couldn't. As time went on, though, it became clear that the conventions of reality TV that sprouted up had calcified and that rather than liberating us they were imprisoning us.

Beyond that, we just grew sick of all the human Pukémon avatards we had to experience, people who existed to be professionally annoying, wacky or outrageous - people whose need to be acknowledged was as all-consuming as it was pitiful. As viewers, our reactions to reality TV became so predictable they may as well have been scripted just as all the shows turned out to be.

It became clear that no saviours from on high would deliver and that the only ethical thing was to devote all our energies to destroying the phoney reality menace for good.

Britain’s Got Talent 2010

It began as it always should, with two shite sisters: fat, middle-aged and fucked. As fucked as Steve Brookstein’s career, as fucked as Celine Dion’s teeth, as fucked as Andrew Stone at a Michael Barrymore pool party. They were of course called Doubletake, like you’d be walking down a road, see them, do a doubletake and go “wow, what a pair of foxes” rather than, say, “the milk’s gone bad!” Rick James in Studio 54 style. Anyway, the fat girls played Salvation Army tambourines (“timbrels” they insisted) and performed a vibrant routine that showcased their uncanny ability to hit a percussion instrument with their hands and had their bingo wings flapping joyfully in the breeze.

During the judging, Amanda Holden criticised them for showing no emotion which is a bit rich coming from somebody whose ability to express emotion died with her last botox shot. They were quickly shitcanned, the first ritual sacrifice to sate the public’s lust for humiliation was completed. Britain’s Got Talent was back.

One problem BGT faces as it enters its fourth serious is that the wacky acts are getting a little too knowing. Kevin Cruise, a one-man act based on a cruise liner entertainer character, angled desperately for that Stavros Flatley “shit-but-we-know-it so vote for us thx plz” slot. He was rank, unfunny and a shattering nause but got through. I could really do without this recurring shitemare.

Then there are the people who seem to have come to the wrong audition. A woman walked on with a giant parrot on her shoulder and announced that it would eat mashed potato from a fork. It refused and bit her. She wasn’t looking for fame - she was looking for her marbles.

Yet there is always something to warm the heart and it came in the form of 10-year-old Chloe Hickinbottom who channelled Vera Lynn singing White Cliffs of Dover remarkably accurately. Chillingly so, in fact. It reminded you of a horror film where the dead take over children’s personalities. I’m not quite sure why we need a 10-year-old Vera Lynn impersonator but as that pudding headed fuck Piers Morgan pointed out it would be a perfect act for the Royal Variety Performance.

The most disturbing portion of the opening show was the return of 13 year-old drummer Kieran Gaffney who just missed out on the semis last year. In a baffling move, Kieran decided to return in a three-piece combo Mixed Emotions featuring him and his parents. Baffling, that is, until you see his parents - a mutton dressed as lamb mum and a renal failure dressed as darts legend Bobby George dad - the tryhard wannabe embarrassments curbstomping their son’s drumming dreams to a bloody pulp with what is certain to go down as the most morally offensive performance in the history of the TV talent show.

Having stunk the joint out so badly many audience members needed oxygen masks, mum and dad were quickly told to piss off and Kieran came back later on a solo tip, did his Little Drummer Boy thing and got through. Well, good for him but I don’t think this is the way forward. He’s 13 and he can drum - so what? He’s not a tap dancing foetus or breakdancing geriatric - he’s just pretty nifty on the skins. And he’s going to turn into some approximation of his father one day which is reason enough to snuff his career out right now. He’s like the Nazis in the 30s - appeasement will not work.

Tell you what, though: I bloody loved that ballet dancing dog.

The verdict on Britain’s Got Talent 2010: If Shandy, the ballet dog does not come on stage at the Royal Variety Performance to “The Bitch Is Back” I consider it an opportunity wasted.

Marks out of 10: 7.5

Britain’s Got Talent Final 2009

Is there a more worthless turd actively operating than Amanda Holden? She grates more than Dannii Minogue who is the Fellini of nause. Piers Morgan is a turd too, Helen Keller can see that, but he did have enough about him to edit a national newspaper at 39 even if he did make a bunch of stuff up, publish phoney photos of soldiers pissing on PoWs, issue begrudging non-apologies, get shitcanned, then spend years repeating the same documentary about how fame is just an end in itself these days and isn’t that awful? Holden looks good in her underwear in a vapid thousand yard porn stare kind of way and looked handsome and demure on the Britain’s Got Talent Final show but it really isn’t good enough. I know there has got to be a voice of the people att-a-boy judge but she knows nothing about anything. Her cluelessness cannot be fathomed. It is as dark and noxious as her insincerity.

Aye, but it was never about her was it? The public only had eyes for one woman. Susan Boyle wasn’t very good on the night but she won in all but the factual sense of the word. She won by losing and ending up in the Priory which as well as being a powerful symbol of success gone awry is a high-end medical facility for tailspinning celebrity. You’ve arrived, kid, and you’re getting the best care available. Such are the trappings of fame as Piers Morgan no doubt observed during one of his 19 consecutive identical documentaries on the subject. Boyle can now record an Elaine Page covers album and retire to the countryside away from predatory press, over-zealous well-wishers and 300 tubs of skanky defoliation cream.

Boyle left the vulgar task of actual “winning” to Diversity - a group of young dancing herberts from Essex and, don’t front, their routine was spectacular. Frenetic, precise and exuberant they thrilled and engaged the audience. The three red buzzers move was a stroke of genius - one of those moments that, like the first flash of Riverdance gusset, reminded us all of the joy of dance.

Something Stavros Flatley, the likeable father and son fat bastard combo, could make no claim to. They gracelessly bounced around the stage for a bit before disappearing into the darklands from whence they came. I didn’t really want them in the final in the first place but this is a popularity contest and this is the United Kingdom and their success was down to the uniquely British belief that being plucky, charming and shite mitigates all wrongdoing - a belief that is sometimes amusing but mainly misguided.

But these shows just keep coming and keep succeeding. The idea that you might find a million-dollar baby in a five-and-dime store still captures the imagination. Susan Boyle was one such baby - the nation’s wayward hairy angel who went viral then went nuts and now rubs shoulders with Tom Chaplin from Keane in the Priory canteen as he tries to score some port from the clinic dealer. While they still turn up 10 carat diamonds like her, the TV talent show will stay in ruddy health.

The verdict on Britain’s Got Talent Final: The verdict is final.

Marks out of 10: 7

The Apprentice Series 2

You think 80s revivalism has gone too far? Of course you do - it was a cultural and political holocaust venerated only by piss drinking baby rapists, Vic 20 enthusiasts and Manimal star Simon MacCorkindale. It is therefore fitting that this year’s Apprentice contestants are an assortment of recruitment filth who take you right back to the worst decade in recorded time. It’s as if dinosaur cloning scientists merged the DNA of Margaret Thatcher, Gordon Gekko and Alan B’stard and spawned an unholy litter of goal-orientated hair-gelled careerist scum in one go.

The 14 hopefuls are quickly split into two groups of seven girls and seven boys. Their first task is to choose a team name. The girls take less than three minutes to come up with Velocity. An hour later the boys have yet to come up with a shortlist.

This despite the efforts of Syed, one of the most offensive men that ever lived, who is convinced that his idea ‘The A-Team’ is the best. The others remain unconvinced and take to brainstorming. Syed, helpfully reads the results back to them “Success, vision, creativity, maverick - all of that rolls into the A-Team”.

Is this guy on commission? Ben, a plummy IT consultant tells them “I like the idea of combining two words into one new word that doesn’t actually mean anything but sounds good”. I quite agree, Ben. Here’s a couple for you: Shut-the, Fuck-up.

They finally settle on Invicta (“it’s Latin for indestructible”) and make Ben the project leader for the task. Selling a load of fruit on Hackney market with a budget of £500.

The girls team is ably led by Karen, a sexy lawyer who hails from Scotland. Tall, dark-haired and willowy, she looks great for 39. Too bad she’s 34. The girls get a load of free fruit from the wholesalers by flirting with the men there and generally pushing their luck. The fruit may be over-ripe and on the turn but so are the women. While the boys are busy practising the ancient art of haggling, the girls are busy practising the ancient art of showing their tits. Good for them.

The girls clearly make a better profit by several hundred pounds but Sugar is far from sweet on the idea of flirting to get crappy fruit. He lambasts them for using their feminine wiles in this disgraceful manner and gives them five minutes to come up with a reason why the hell he should award them the victory. Sexy Karen comes back and gives him one and he says “Yeah, alright then. I was only hamming it up for the cameras, I think you’ve got great tits, go and enjoy the champagne with the rest of the slaaags” something which Sexy Karen is only too happy to do.

So we’re left with two-word Ben, fuck faced Syed and Samuel, an anonymous product developer in the final three frame to be sacked. Sir Alan isn’t impressed with any of them - Ben oversaw failure of the task, Syed is an obnoxious turd and Samuel spends his entire time avoiding responsibility.

The verdict arrives and there’s another two word phrase for Ben: You’re fired. What a chump.

Sugar is one of those people who is widely disliked but people have grudging respect for. People want to earn his respect, which is a useful quality to have. He’s fond of telling anyone who’ll listen that he doesn’t like bullshitters, schmoozers or arse-lickers.

Isn’t he in the wrong game?

The verdict on The Apprentice: I believe in smart-ass reviews. That’s why my fee for this piece is going to Great Ormond Street.

Marks out of 10: 7

Big Brother 2008

Watching Big Brother is like meeting up with a friend diagnosed with a terminal illness. You’re smiling but you’re basically waiting for him to die. He’s become a drain on you, his family and the country and not just financially. He’s an emotional parasite who sucks the life and joy out of every locale he enters. You want to rinse his chemo-addled skull with your hot piss and choke the little life left in him right out with your bare hands. But no. You stay, you smile and you sympathise. Because that’s how you roll.

Endemol will have you believing there’s life in the old dog yet, though, and there is certainly no shortage of lemmings willing to throw themselves off the fame cliff if the auditions are anything to go by. These douchebags really will do anything to become famous. Ricky Gervais, when asked what advice he would give to somebody wanting to become famous, said “murder a prostitute” which was a very good answer. Notoriety will do for most of these nitwits. But just who are those brave amphibians swimming around the goldfish bowl over the summer months?

Lisa, 40, the sales rep and Amazonian breast implant vessel from Warrington says the most significant event in her life was when her borefriend pawned his Rolex to buy her fake tits for her. And they say romance is dead.

Mario, 42, the Rolex-pawning long-turd borefriend of Lisa. The Sylvester Stallone, Linc from Prison Break and Buzz Lightyear lookalike suffers from fits of rage and has to be chained to a wall at night and fed raw steak. Has spent the early exchanges offering Olympic standard patronage to Wee Blind Mikey in the hope of staving off his inevitable early eviction.

Luke, 20, entered the Big Brother house to change people’s perception of students. The Frank Sidebottom sounding pro-wrestling announcer doesn’t smoke, drink, do drugs or swear and supports the Conservative party. Seems likely to kickstart a debate a la Gareth from The Office about whether he is an arse faced weasel or a weasel faced arse.

Stephanie, 19, a sexually attractive blonde girl who got kicked out of Popstars for lying about her age. Aerial Telly likes Stephanie. She was alone in showing some balls standing up to the hateful skankatollah Alex the other night and he likes his girls to have a bit of fire in their belly. She will, of course, be first out of the house and first into Nuts magazine.

Rachel, 24, a Welsh trainee teacher with an impressive arse. Rachel will be this year’s winner according to Aerial Telly’s close personal friend and reality TV betting genius Ed Murray. An endorsement from Ed is like getting a blessing from the reality TV pope so keep an eye on this Welsh pie.

Dale, 21, a student PE teacher who says he will “nail any fanny” inside the house and shouted “get your snatch out!” to Rebecca during a game of Truth or Dare. There’s no substitute for class.

Dennis, 23, dance student. Bears an alarming resemblance to Herr Lipp from The League of Gentlemen. Thinks he is heading up a new Lipgloss Bitches clique but the tedious freak is so far out of his depth with Sylvia and Alexandra it’s not funny.

Michael, 33, a blind, Scottish radio producer whose disability instantly made him the house child - a benign, sexless creature who everyone could project their fantasies of the essential innocence and goodness of humanity onto. He will get few nominations as a result so expect this boy to be in the final four shakeup. Excellent ‘Chosen One’ material should the producers choose to make him.

Alexandra, 23, accounts “executive” is a nastier version of Charley if such a thing is possible. Unspeakably vile bullying freak who needs murdering every second she’s on the planet.

Rex, 23, the executive chef is so far notable for being ginger and utterly anonymous.

Mohammed, 23, is a toy demonstrator who was born in Somalia. He has the perfect combination of affable and dreary that makes him a stayer with zero chance of winning.

Rebecca, 23, a nursery nurse. A fat, Vicky Pollard clone who reminds you of last year’s Laura. The first, and least welcome, of the girls to expose her breasticles, Rebecca has a distressing condition known as Nadia arse where she wears thongs despite having the buttocks of a man. The condition is non-fatal but means she and everyone viewing the spectacle may as well be dead.

Darnell, 26, an albino former gangster from St Louis who now lives in London. Darnell’s main ambition is to wrestle the title of Whitest Black Man on the Planet from Aerial Telly.

Jennifer, 22, a part-time model, is a loving single mum who has apparently abandoned her child for fame. This self-professed Catholic bad girl is anti-fox hunting, anti-abortion, anti-smoking, and anti-fur. Let the party begin...

Kathreya, 30, is a fat Buddhist Thai massage therapist. From Thailand. 5 foot 4 and 400 stone, Kathreya made an immediate impact as the early favourite. Whether she maintains this early form depends upon exactly how annoying her screeching and giggling becomes. What do you reckon?

Sylvia, 21, is a devious double-dealing shitbag inside the house who came to the UK aged 11 when civil war broke out in her native Sierra Leone. Reports that she started it are almost definitely true.

That’s your lot. I’m off to watch the football. Peace.

The verdict on Big Brother 2008: In gradual decline.

Marks out of 10: 6

Big Brother 2008: Stuart tapped the compassion vending machine and it toppled over and fell on top of him

Attention seeking eyeliner-wearing muscle mary mouthbreather Stuart was the focus of last night’s Big Brother. Noteworthy only for looking like an extra from 300 he has bilge for personality but the paranoia brought on by years of self abuse finally provided some entertainment. After the world’s worst poet Belinda and a couple of other mopes heard some inconclusive shouts over the fence, word got around that a syllable sounding something like ‘cha’ was discernible. So Stuart naturally assumed that it was the phrase “GET STUART OUT”, that the entire outside world hates him and that life wasn’t worth living. If only anyone gave a fuck enough for that to be true.

There followed some spectacularly unconvincing crying for the camera from Stuart, Belinda (bafflingly feeling responsible in some way) was on some Billy Bragg shit like “I am the milkman of human kindness - I will leave an extra pint” and suddenly burst into tears while trying to reassure Chicken Stu. This was the last thing he expected.

All of a sudden, it was Stu comforting Bellender. A wobbling mass of tear streaked emotion that he had no idea how to deal with (quite apart from not having the inclination). Fat Bex came along and watched in mute incomprehension (well, mute by her standards - the tubby fuck only squealed twice).

Stu stumbled upon a brilliant exit strategy. “I need a shower” he said, even though he’d just stepped out of one.

Bellender’s incredibly altruistic display of emotion was of course all about her. A way of showing how compassionate, empathetic and generally brilliant she truly is. In attempting to emotionally manipulate the house, Stuart had stepped into the dojo with a Zen master of specious bullshit. The overfed maudlin fuck gave Stuart a clinic in passive aggression he won’t forget. Until he runs out of eyeliner.

X-Factor 2005

After last year’s thrilling finale between G4’s classy poperatics and the cheeseball stylings of Steve Brookstein, (booed at his first gig after emerging victorious, who says this doesn’t lead to success?) X Factor returned in bullish mood, confident of a winning formula. And well they might be - they stole it from Pop Idol after all (if you believe Simon Fuller).

Having whittled away the lunatics, no-hopers and nearly men, the judges were left with the 12 grateful finalists. It was a Who’s Who of Who’s That? Something Aerial Telly is glad to help out with

4Tune - The lantern-jawed yankophiles were the band of the year. Unfortunately, the year was 1991.

Addictiv Ladies - A missing vowel and a missing chromosome did for these generic R&B turds.

Andy Abraham - He’s a smooth dustbin-swinging brother with a voice like liquid gold.

Brenda Edwards - Gigantic flagcracker who sings the arse off everyone each week.

Chenai Zinuku - Attention-seeking crybaby who thinks the world owes her a living because she reached boot camp stage last year.

Chico Slimari - Laughably poor Ricky Martin wannabe with feet of clay and tonsils of tin.

Journey South - Twin pronged blandathon, all vocal harmony and rousing choruses - will go far.

Maria Lawson - Talented but suffered from being black, female and married. Got voted off by evil Oirish mafia Godfather Louis O’Walsh to save The O’Conway Sisters.

Nicholas Dorsett - The worthy heir to chin beast Craig David, sang like a tit when it mattered.

Philip McGee - Utterly clueless rabbit in headlights, quickly put out of his misery in the finals.

The Conway Sisters - Spent approximately 0.13 seconds in tune in their last performance, a personal best.

Shayne Ward - known by millions as “that boy off the telly”, Shayne is Justin Timberlake’s retarded kid brother who they kept under the sink until he was 15, listening to Boyz II Men records.

Ostensibly, this is where things get interesting between the acts but the key battles take place between the judges. They spend most of their time undermining the others’ abilities as mentors and in fatuous point-scoring - which is terrific fun, of course.

Hymen Cowell speaks the truth but his “sounded a bit karaoke to me” insults are becoming a touch played out. It’s nonetheless been funny to watch his increasingly bemused reactions to the Cult of Chico Time (Slimari’s contrived catchphrase and debut single).

Louis Walsh, on the other hand, is a hopeless people pleaser, way too concerned with what the audience think of him. His pussying out in picking the O’Conway Sisters ahead of Marie was as spineless as a performance from a judge as you could imagine. What a hapless tool he is.

And Sharon Osbourne couldn’t play more shamelessly to the gallery if she were Freddie Mercury - not once does she go against the general audience feeling, an audience consisting largely of the act’s families and friends. Way to defeat the whole purpose, Sharon.

As we approach the finishing straight it looks like it’s most likely between Shayne, Journey South and Andy. Like Steve the Cheeseball they won’t have much of a career. Brenda probably deserves to win. She definitely won’t. Cowell will win his legal case and all be well in the world of X Factor. Don’t fight it - some things were simply meant to be.

The verdict on X-Factor: New Faces with ‘tude.

Marks out of 10: 7

X Factor 2008 - sob stories bring misery to millions

The return of X Factor should always be welcomed. It’s a great format that produces laughter, tears and distress to the innocent. Though the real story of the early rounds of X Factor 2008 is the increasingly dreary and dubious sob stories that are clogging up the audition stages.

The first episode had a 17-year-old girl from Bridgend framing her fame lust as some kind of mercy mission. “Because of all the bad press that Bridgend has had recently I just think that getting through would be a good bit of news that we need”. Eh? Oh, I get it - Bridgend the graveyard for 22 whingeing adolescents. Well, that’s just what the parents need: a rendition of My Light Shines On every Saturday evening. Truly, the living would envy the dead.

It was no surprise when the girl revealed that cocksmoking producers coaxed her into talking about the Bridgend suicides and she could give nary a fuck about the emo holocaust on her doorstep (can you blame her?) It was a laughably tenuous link in the first place and it was quickly followed by 23-year-old call centre worker claiming to be gripped by a burning desire to make his biological parents proud. Turns out this was a load of old balls as well.

Even more bizarrely, there was the 26-year-old mother of five who was addicted to crack at 13, fitting in heroin addiction among the way. As unbelievable as the story was, it was the only authentic one of the three. And the dumb fuck could sing too.

Some touchy-feely biography is inevitable on a show like X Factor but the focus on the increasingly surreal tragedies and hardships is becoming tough to bear. At this rate, Job from the Old Testament would be a shoo-in for the final with a rendition of one of those Oh Lordy spirituals Moby sampled. Chrissie Hynde was on some “it is time for you to stop all of this sobbing” shit and the girl was spot the hell on.

The verdict on X Factor 2008: You’re through to the next round.

Marks out of 10: 7.5

Gong intermission

Aerial Telly Awards 2008

It’s 2008 and television is stronger than ever. The corollary of this is that Aerial “Money” Telly, television in corporeal form, begotten not made of one being with the telly, also came back stronger than ever. And here he is once again with his annual awards to make and break the careers of those working in the industry. Fools tried to cause trouble for Aerial Telly but it’s an eternal truth that punks jump up to get beat down. All they did was further highlight his genius, tenacity and adaptability. You can’t test him, serve him or duplicate him. Motherfucker, what?

Best show: The Inbetweeners

E4’s sixth form comedy The Inbetweeners was little watched but loved to tiny pieces by those who did. The brilliant evocation of schoolyard humour and the pinpoint observation of shit friends, lame parties and bad sex that make up adolescent life were a joy to behold and Aerial Telly’s strong endorsement of this ensured it got a second season which will be required viewing for all you douchebags.

Worst show: Bonekickers

In 350 odd reviews only one show had received 0 out of 10 from Aerial Telly and that involved that turd Rory Bremner. Bonekickers became the second show to enter this particular hall of shame and man did it ever earn it? From its unshakeable and utterly unwarranted belief in its own relevance to its hateful characters, scenery chewing performances, cocksmoking dialogue, fundamentally retarded premise and cloying liberal self-hate it was an abortion of a show and anyone who tells you otherwise needs murdering, decapitating and their head stuck on a spike on Traitor’s Gate.

Best performance by a male: Bryan Cranston as Walt White in Breaking Bad

When you help redefine situation comedy with the greatest family sitcom ever you may feel your work on Earth is done. But not Bryan Cranston who put in a career-best performance as terminally ill chemistry teacher Walt White entering the drug trade in the brilliant Breaking Bad. Aerial Telly interviewed Bryan Cranston earlier this week so expect that to hit the shelves in 10 days time and further bolster the show’s burgeoning reputation.

Best performance by a female: Glenn Close as Patty Hewes in Damages

There she goes again - playing a maniac. But Glenn Close is no fool and, rather like when she turned up on season four of The Shield, she knew she was backed by terrific writing on Damages to augment her singularly intense performance as the sociopath lawyer Patty Hewes who, I should remind you, does not play.

TV pie of the year: Christina Hendricks

Steph Song in jPod gave Aerial Telly chills that were multiplying. Mary Louise Pierker had him a blast in Weeds. But ultimately Christina Hendricks in Mad Men was the one that he wanted. Aerial Telly may have mentioned his feelings towards Hendricks in passing in the Mad Men review. As one of the characters in season two says “she is just so much woman”. No fucking arguments there, chief

TV Event Of The Year: The Wire Series Finale

The tense climax of this phenomenal show was pulled off masterfully. The cycle of violence, retribution and incarceration continued unabated. Heroes died, villains prospered and, in a couple of cases, people made the right decision to get the fuck out of the game. It was sad to see it go but TV is forever changed by this extraordinary project.

See you next year, suckers. Regardless of war, famine or apocalypse Aerial Telly will just keep on coming. Count on it.

British comedy: the highs and lows and why it blows

The British have a tradition of producing funny fuckers. Great British comedians are legion and whether they came from the working men's clubs, vaudeville or Cambridge Footlights it's a tradition they are rightly proud of. For the British, being funny is a life goal. So it's always a puzzle when a bag of shit like The Persuasionists or PhoneShop rolls up, splits its seams and spills its unholy poop payload over our screens. How did they ever get made? Were people too scared to speak out? And why do ITV so horribly fuck up almost every sitcom they touch?

No single man can definitively answer these questions. Unless of course that man is Aerial Telly, television in human form, begotten not made, of one being with the telly. Jesus Christ but you're lucky to have him.

My Family: Reloaded

Some sitcoms write themselves. In the case of M*A*S*H, Father Ted and The Office it’s because the characters are so acutely drawn and their relationships so expertly infused with tension that comedy flows effortlessly from every situation they get into. In the case of My Family it’s because of the poverty of aspiration of the writers and the remorseless insistence on sticking to the family sitcom formula.

There must be other sitcoms less suited to a clips show but I can’t think of them offhand. My Family: Reloaded provided us with various scenarios from the six-year run of the show. Ben and Susan Harper (luvvie stalwarts Robert Lindsay and Zoë Wanamaker) have the utterly predictable sitcom relationship. A stressed, middle-class man manipulated by his dominating wife. Ben is a dentist by day and a mild-mannered misanthrope by night - a diet Victor Meldrew. Susan is also misanthropic but more inclined to get excited about furnishings and the like.

I’m not sure where the comic conflict between the two is supposed to be. Margaret Meldrew could not have been more different from her husband - she was a civilising force and comic foil in the relationship. Ben and Susan are too alike to have convincing arguments. Every row seems contrived and the put-downs could have been scripted for any one of a hundred sitcom couples.

They have a thick son, Nick, played excellently by Kris Marshall. In the first series Nick looked to have potential as a great comedy thicky. He may never have been Trigger or Dougal but it was the biggest loss to the show when he went to look for serious acting work like those BT commercials. He has a face built for comedy.

The honeypied Daniela Denby-Ashe plays Janey, the wayward stroppy daughter effectively enough. Her malleable morals and unapologetic sexuality are the closest this show gets to subversion. It would be interesting to see what she gets up to past the watershed and not just for the obvious reasons.

There’s another son who I, and the rest of the viewers, really couldn’t give two fucks about.

The clips came and they went: Ben being punched, Nick entering the room in stupid outfits, Michael playing at soldiers, Nick snogging his father, disturbingly. Nothing really raised a smile despite the best efforts of the sulphate-cranked studio audience who choked with laughter at every pratfall and telegraphed one-liner.

There’s not lot I can say about My Family - it’s a sunny day and I have a life to lead. It isn’t the worst family sitcom around. Tragically, it’s probably the best British one. Comparing it to the genius of the recently deceased Malcolm in the Middle just amplifies its shortcomings. There will be several more seasons to come. Count on it.

The verdict on My Family: It’s just there.

Marks out of 10: 4

The Persuasionists

You want to know the really terrifying thing about The Persuasionists? They knew. Every one of them. Daisy Haggard did Psychoville, Green Wing and Man Stroke Woman. Adam Buxton - he did The Adam and Joe show. He’s funny. Simon Farnaby worked with Chris Morris. Iain Lee, um, introduced Sacha Baron Cohen. Co-producers Iain Morris and Damon Beesley wrote The Inbetweeners. And, ignoring his joyless, pious Twitter feed, script editor Andrew Collins is a really good writer. They know the difference. Can you imagine them waiting for this to go public? The shame, the fear, the self-loathing? Dragging this career timebomb along with them for all those months? And you think the Haiti footage is harrowing?

So yeah, the rumours are true. The Persuasionists is eyepoppingly poor and I’m going to blame the writer/creator Jonathan Thake. Most of the others have been involved in something good and his only notable claim to fame is the Pot Noodle “Slag of All Snacks” campaign. That thick-eared Kevin Bishop yobbery is certainly present here. He’s created soundbite situation comedy - slogans and jokoids buffed and polished, utterly unrelated to each other, situation, story or character.

The upshot is we are in an ad agency. Billy (Iain Lee) is the ideas man; Greg (Adam Buxton) is the no-ideas man; Emma (Daisy Haggard) a pretty vacant trollop; boss Clive (Jarred Christmas) is a larger-than-life Australian; Keaton (Simon Farnaby) is a madcap foreign office lothario (think Kramer meets Colin Hunt). As if you need telling, it’s a wacky ad agency where anything goes.

It’s located firmly in Sitcomland - that magical place where people say and do things you only see in sitcoms. It’s trying to be The IT Crowd but Graham Linehan is a master who has an atomically precise grasp of sitcom fundamentals and plays with convention brilliantly. The Persuasionists principals just butt up against each other like West End holograms appearing in different shows. Behavioural non sequiturs abound.

Simon Farnaby as Keaton is one of the worst cases of miscasting since Christopher Ryan was hastily shoehorned in as Mike the Cool Guy in The Young Ones. It’s a shit name choice too. You’d be surprised how important the character’s name is. You know Nicholas Lyndhurst is Rodney Trotter before you’re even introduced. But none of the characters here resemble their names. Turdly writing again.

Jonathan Thake seems to have gone “wouldn’t it be funny/weird if....?”, collected a load of quirky, unusual and incongruent things and included every single one on the off chance that one might be funny. Loser Greg dates a model. The agency promotes Cockney Cheese. Emma sticks the ugly people in the boiler (geddit?!) room. He strikes out because none of this is funny. It’s a waste of a talented cast. It’s highly derivative. It can go fuck itself.

The verdict on The Persuasionists: The slag of all sitcoms.

Marks out of 10: 4

Extras Christmas special

Aerial Telly is a big Extras fan and always has been. Ricky Gervais is a comic genius and the sniping at him is mere envy from the dispossessed and that hack Jerry Seinfeld is not in his class. And as for those of you saying that The Office US is better than the original - blow me, you skunks. Motherfucker, it ain’t even on a level. The final ever Extras episode finds When the Whistle Blows continuing its underserved commercial success, theatrical agent Darren Lamb as clueless as ever and Andy as misery personified.

Why? Because success isn’t enough. It never is. He wants to do something classy, doesn’t want to be remembered as a man in a stupid wig spouting stupid catchphrases. So he dumps the hapless Darren for Tre Cooper, a young thrusting agent who promises to get him onto the A-list if he is willing to play the fame game TO THE EXTREME. Andy thinks he can have it all. He is so, so wrong.

The final Extras is about how we square our integrity with increasing success. Andy hates himself for churning out his desperate cookie cutter sitcom but he can’t tear himself away from the benefits of fame. He becomes a cynical industry operator, too snotty to talk to the herd of extras from which he emerged, too typecast to get respect anywhere else. He shitcans his sitcom to do work with more credibility and ends up playing a space slug on Doctor Who. It was never meant to be like this.

After his new agent stops returning his calls, Andy goes down the path of least resistance and enters Celebrity Big Brother among such luminaries as Lionel Blair, Chico, June Sarpong, Lisa Scott-Lee and an actress playing a celebrity who is clearly meant to be Abi Titmuss (boyfriend accused of rape, sex tape, lads mags, glass-eyed fame-hungry scuttling). You wonder if Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais asked Abi to do the role herself. How would that conversation go?

As you would expect, the Celebrity Big Brother house is a hellish three-ring circus where the palely notorious seek to raise their profiles. The pressure cooker environment begins to take its toll on the celebs. “You know what I look forward to these days?” Lionel Blair tells Andy “Death”. Isn’t everyone looking forward to Lionel Blair’s death? KIDDING!

After Abi Titmuss talks about the politics of selling her wedding to Hello! magazine Andy finally snaps and delivers a brilliant monologue on the insanity of celebrity culture. “You open a paper and see a picture of Lindsay Lohan getting out of a car and the headline is “cover up Lindsay we can see your knickers” - of course you can see her knickers! Your photographer is lying in the road pointing his camera up her dress to see her knickers. You’re literally the gutter press”. Has this ever been better put?

He delivers a heartfelt message to Maggie, apologising for being mean to her earlier in the episode. “You’re my best friend... you’re my only friend” he says, choking back tears. Under normal circumstances it would be quite moving.

The problem is that Maggie is not a great friend. She is an appalling friend - a vile, poisonous cretin who undermines Andy at every turn. Not once does somebody call him fat and ugly without her nodding in agreement. Not once does she miss an opportunity to imply he has no talent or is shit with women. Too cowardly or talentless to pursue her own dreams, she spends her time mocking and undermining his.

A weaselly shitbag who nearly ruined Andy’s big sitcom break by running her mouth to the gay producer she nonetheless spends her time leeching off his success, getting extras roles she is not entitled to, eating dinner at swanky restaurants she never pays for and meeting stars she would never have met were it not for the friend she routinely abuses.

Not only passive aggressive, disloyal and undermining she is also an industrial strength whinger. Andy needs to get out, make some male friends and start using his celebrity to get some primo pie of the kind Aerial Telly would consider entertaining during one of his barren patches^1.

Damp eyed reconciliations with someone who represents and embodies all his failures are not what Andy needs for redemption. He needs to be using his fame for good and that means picking up strumpets in exclusive clubs and getting all the sex he missed out on when he was banging Ronnie Corbett lookalikes. Now that would be a happy ending. Andy being blown by the Abi Titmuss character while he snorts a line of cocaine and crushed Ecstasy off her Prada handbag.

Aren’t they the real benefits of fame?

The verdict on Extras Christmas special: Impressive farewell to an excellent show

Marks out of 10: 8

1Aerial Telly barren patches? Fuck out of here.

PhoneShop

Nothing can really prepare you for how bad E4's new shitcom PhoneShop is but my advice is to keep the volume as low as you can. Because above all it is an aural assault as gratingly unfunny turds Ashley (Andrew Brooke) and Jerwayne (Javone Prince) employ cloddish Ebonics in exchanges that seem to never end. The idea that urban argot is intrinsically funny is as persistent as it is false. Like Coming of Age before it, it chases the youth demographic with as little dignity and as much desperation as it can muster. It's fucking pitiful.

Let's get this straight one last time. Young people are scum - selfish, illiterate, mewling, gump-ass mopes with no more right to walk the earth than a parakeet has to own a condo. Their opinions don't matter, nothing they say or do is of consequence and they should be ignored totally by all broadcast media across the board in every circumstance. Aerial Telly has schooled chumps on this before but apparently television wasn't listening. So he would like to make it clear to the next person ignoring one of his fatwas that he will personally amputate their face with a knife dipped in shit the next time they make a program pandering to that 16-24 slime.

Incidentally, a reviewer in a national tabloid writes of PhonePlop “viewers outside London whose ears aren’t assaulted by urban youth-speak every day might want reassurance we are still in Britain”. I'm from Birmingham, what the fuck else do you think I hear when I pass shitbag schoolkids? Thundernause hack bastard.

It barely matters but the first episode introduces us to Christopher (Tom Bennett), the New Man in the shop - a graduate but hopelessly lacking experience in the field. Seasoned retail humps Gashley and Turdwayne give him impenetrable, useless and interchangeable advice (these two are exactly the same character, a character replicated again by some freak looking skank from a rival shop who materialises spontaneously from the show's insatiable need to stick more shit street talk in a mannequin's mouth and hope that the audience are too dipshit stupid to notice what a turd is being served up).

There's so many ways PhoneShop is bad. People do stupid shithead things people only do in sitcom. Boss Lance (Martin Trenaman) keeps a shrine to previous star employee Little Gary Patel. Nobody ever has or ever will do this in real life and it isn't consistent with Lance's character so it just isn't funny. Timid underling Janine (Emma Fryer last seen in Home Time) also venerates Patel. No one does this; nothing in their characters suggests they ever would. Yet more character points sacrificed to the false god Zany. The death toll rises with each new shitcom.

Ricky Gervais edited the script and, assuming this isn't an honorary credit, I would hate to see what it looked like before he saw it. As is increasingly the case these days, there are a lot of commentscum suspiciously defending it online as if they have some kind of stake in it. They can all go fuck themselves as can this absolute dog of a show.

The verdict on PhoneShop: This is about as bad as television gets. This is about as bad as life gets.

Marks out of 10: 2

No Heroics

Aerial Telly has pretty much had it with superheroes. He has no idea who goes to see The Hulk, Spiderman 1, 2 or 3 or who the fuck Tobey Maguire is. He understands perfectly well why small children would want to see such films but these screenings are attended by adults. What the frak is up with that? It puts you in mind of those people whose favourite book is Harry Potter - a Band-Aid placed over the slashed jugular of their illiteracy. But I suppose a sitcom about superheroes could have potential? For the sake of No Heroics, we better hope so. It’s an ITV sitcom after all, the television equivalent of being born with no arms or legs in Johannesburg’s darkest slum to an abusive meth head father and schizophrenic crack ho mother who killed her last 14 children with scissors to the head.

No Heroics is ITV2’s first original sitcom and features a group of off-duty superheroes drinking, whingeing and fucking up together in The Fortress - the superhero hangout with three immutable rules: “No Masks, No Powers and No Heroics”.

There’s Alex, “The Hotness” (Nicholas Burns) who produces heat at will. Stupid, vain and cowardly, his search for the hero inside himself seems to be taking longer than usual. His ex-girlfriend Sarah (Claire Keelan) is “Electroclash”, blessed with the power to control machines with her voice. She usually uses this to fuck up her dad’s car batteries and steal from ATMs. She’s a stroppy dark haired piece of pie who, it must be said, looks pretty good in superhero slut boots.

Electroclash once formed one half of the brilliantly named Ladytrouble duo with Jenny, “She-Force” (Rebekah Staton), a fat lass with superstrength, a sunny outlook and no clue at all about anything.

Perhaps the weirdest of the bunch is Don, “Timebomb” (James Lance) an alcoholic Spanish homosexual into no strings sex and torture who can see 60 seconds into the future. The scope for planet saving heroics with this particular combination of traits is pretty limited but Don is a funny fucker and quite insightful for a sociopath.

As the low ranking capes unwind in The Fortress, discussing their mediocrity and self-loathing they have to negotiate the superhero pecking order clear to everyone in the joint. Alex’s life is made miserable by Devlin, “Excelsor” (Patrick Baladi), Britain’s most successful superhero. A smug and cruel egomaniac, he gets great pleasure from bullying Alex in front of his crew of flunkies at every opportunity. This is always funny because Alex kind of deserves it for being such a tit and Devlin is a remorselessly unpleasant bastard. Patrick Baladi does great with this one.

No Heroics is a lot of fun. Our heroes are treated with contempt by pretty much everyone whose path they cross and there’s no embarrassing Heroes style meditation on what constitutes a real hero. If anything, it’s a celebration of human weakness. No one really knows how to do the right thing and the best that they can hope for is to be slightly less than useless... just for one day.

The verdict on No Heroics: Hate the caper, not the cape.

Marks out of 10: 8

The Thick of It Series 3

No show cares more about language than The Thick of It. Dialogue heavy, it is brutally gangbanged into shape through multiple drafts, read-throughs and cast improv and if a syllable is one degree off rotation it is vaporised and rebuilt from scratch. It’s probably why writers like the show so much and why the verbal violence they revel in is more dangerous than a surgeon who dips his scalpel in shit.

Series 3 begins with a new dawn at the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship. Hugh Abbot is no longer with us because the public believe Chris Langham is a baby rapist^1. In his place is Nicola Murray (Rebecca Front) - inexperienced and out of her depth in the piranha pool. Her marriage is flailing around like Danielle Lloyd exiting a nightclub and her son’s about to be expelled from school. Glenn and Ollie are still doing their double act which, as you can imagine, is a massive help to her.

Murray is stuck in a conceptual cul-de-sac while trying to explain her big idea: fourth sector pathfinders. Pathfinders are people who get themselves out of poverty and inspire the community to do the same. No one really knows what this means and it commits the government to nothing but platitude. It’s the perfect modern policy.

In episode five Nicola goes head-to-head with her Tory shadow Peter Mannion on The Richard Bacon Show and it’s glorious. The pair take turns in mangling the party line, prompting both Tucker and Tory spin doctor Stewart Pearson to parachute in to shore up their defences. Pearson, a brilliantly drawn rucksack sporting rat fuck played terrifically by Vincent Franklin, is one of the lesser known joys of the show. Brought in by the Tories from the world of brand management he’s an unexpectedly good foil for Tucker. He wants the Tories to appeal to “One Show man and Holby City woman”. There’s something heroic, almost epic about his shitheadedness. It’s barely human.

And showing he’s sometimes human, Tucker reveals a chink of vulnerability in episode six after Terri (Joanna Scanlan who has the knack of appearing in some very good comedy) gently points out that many of the things that have gone wrong that day have been his fault (“I think you’re wrong, Malcolm - you’re like a sultana in a salad”). He takes her to “have a word” and instead of the skewering we expect he opens up about the pressure he’s under “I used to be the fucking pharaoh” he tells her “But now I am fucking floundering in a fucking Nile of shit.”

This scene has been criticised elsewhere (“we like our Malcolm bulletproof” type objections), but Aerial Telly liked this. He likes his characters to have layers. Tough guys like Tucker are allowed to be vulnerable as long as you don’t totally lob their balls off like Buffy the Vampire Slayer did to Spike. Malcolm Tucker walk around castrato? Fuck out of here.

Naw, dog. What we’re watching is a show at full throttle, at the peak of its powers and out for blood. It’s about idiots in extremis and how reasonably smart people can be dumb as Easter Island statues when under briefed, underqualified and under pressure. It’s as acute as Yes Minister was on squirrelly self-preservation when the political tides change. Praise comes no higher.

The verdict on The Thick of It Series 3: Implausibly good right now.

Marks out of 10: 9

1 If they were looking for precedent to justify employing the nonce they could have cited Jeffrey Jones who appeared in three seasons of Deadwood after his child pornography conviction.

Saxondale

Comedians do their best work when they’re miserable. It’s a cliché as truthful as it is hackneyed. Domesticity, moderation and sexual fidelity produces smug observational truisms that amount to nothing. Sexual incontinence, substance abuse and mental breakdown produces searing, insightful life-affirming comedy. And the reason Steve Coogan is still doing good comedy is because he’s made such a colossal fuck up of his personal life that all his energy is being sublimated into his art. Aerial Telly doesn’t make judgments but hooking up with Courtney Love at this time of your life is a sure sign that things aren’t right. The whole point of fame and talent is that they allow you to trade up the nookie food chain, not end up balls deep in the grunge Yoko Ono while you pat the masturbating Michael Stipe on the head like the little bald man off Benny Hill.

So the Chris Morris collaborator, Perrier Award winner and tabloid love skunk has briefly swapped self-destruction and Catholic self-loathing to unveil his latest creation: former roadie and present pest-control agent Tommy Saxondale. Like his creator, Saxondale has lived the rock’n’roll lifestyle but has now settled down into a relationship with young flagcracker Magz (Ruth Jones, last seen in Nighty Night) who designs those hysterically piss poor T-shirts you see advertised in the back of lads mags - the Pope smoking a joint, Prince Philip smoking a joint, (you get the picture).

Coogan brings to bear the same obsessive attention to detail here that he brought to Alan Partridge, Paul Calf and the critically panned but actually rather wonderful Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible. The seventies musical references, vocal tics and gestures of the ageing rocker are faultless. Coogan’s characterisations are real works of art - nothing is left to chance. Tommy is driven by some of the same demons that plagued Alan Partridge - obsessive pedantry, need for recognition, dismay at turning into a relic of a former time. He attends an anger management course at his local library which seems to have the effect of just making him more angry - I’m pretty sure that’s not how this anger management thing is supposed to work.

Morwenna Banks takes time out from spawning mini-David Baddiels to spin an impressive turn as Vicky, the motormouth receptionist Tommy relies on for pest-control jobs. Banks totally nails the effortlessly patronising manner of the underworked receptionist, complete with unfunny wisecracks, single entendres and phoney concern for your private life. She’s one of the many random irritations that stack up in Tommy’s life - not enough by herself to tip him over the edge but the aggregate of the annoyances frequently see him spitting feathers at the sheer absurdity of it all.

He’s also often to be found lacing his conversation with references to Noam Chomsky and the like and the spectacle of the self-taught working-class intellectual dealing death to the urban rodent is one of the less obvious joys of the show. Like so much of his work, it’s terrifically well observed. Coogan has an eye for human weakness and delusion that’s totally unerring. Tony Ferrino is long-forgotten. He’s one of our best comic performers.

The verdict on Saxondale: Simply the pest.

Marks out of 10: 8

Gong intermission

Aerial Telly Awards 2009

There isn’t a single human being breathing whose word carries more weight than Aerial Telly. Those TV motherfuckers hang on his every word like a chump chained to a nuke in a made-for-TV movie listens to a bomb disposal expert. Think they give a damn about an Emmy? They’d push their kids in front of a Tube train to get even the most cursory of acknowledgements from the television panopticon. So in the industry, the Aerial Telly awards are the most eagerly anticipated and feared event in the calendar and now the time has arrived. You might want to take something for your nerves. This could get ugly.

Best show: Battlestar Galactica

30 Rock still rocks, Mad Men’s still crazy and Dexter’s still killing it but 2009 saw a gutsy and moving end to Battlestar Galactica, the arthouse reimagining of a 70s curio that shocked and awed its way through four brilliant seasons of melodrama, genocide, theology and war stories culminating in a breathless finale that stayed true to the show’s quirky, dark, captivating vision. Caprica gets the Galactica saga up and running again in January. The pilot was illing. No way on earth will it not rock.

Worst show: Katy Brand’s Big Ass Show

Michael McIntyre blew harder than Katrina, Paradox was dumber than Fearne Cotton, but neither came close to the comedy holocaust that was Katy Brand’s Big Ass Show. Snide, fuckwitted and life-threateningly unfunny it demonstrated the depressing truth that many comics are quite happy to use a celebrity’s name in lieu of a punchline. Shamelessly derivative, it was a show as contemptuous of its audience as any in living memory. No-talent, zero-integrity Twitter groupie TV critics who sucked up to this should contemplate suicide.

Best performance by a male: Ricky Grover as Matron Hilary Loftus in Getting On

Although scripted by its three female stars, the meatiest performance in the terrific Getting On was put in by seasoned salad dodger Ricky Grover as Matron Hilary Loftus, the passive aggressive by-the-book greasy pole climber who proved that no amount of training courses can get past a fundamental stupidity, addiction to procedure and pathological lack of empathy. If there was an award for counterintuitive casting, this would walk it.

Best performance by a female: Katey Sagal as Gemma Teller Morrow in Sons of Anarchy

Sons of Anarchy is Hamlet and Gemma Teller Morrow is Gertrude - Clay Morrow’s old lady and Charming’s unimpeachable bitch queen. But after her gang rape by white supremacists in the season two premiere we see her vulnerable and broken for the first time. She walks through the fire, though, and shows the gunmetal steel required of a biker gang matriarch. Sagal was note perfect all season, nursing her secret like a mortal wound until the devastating revelation in the run-up to the finale. A regal performance.

Best writer not called Aerial Telly: Marina Hyde

A new award created to scotch the popular and understandable misconception that Aerial Telly is the only writer worth reading. Just because you’re the best it doesn’t mean you can’t acknowledge the second-best priest and Marina Hyde’s brilliant, funny and dazzling columns on sport, politics and showbiz were the other good reason for reading the Guardian in 2009. Her gracious dealing with worthless Guardian commentscum confirmed her as a beast who will not be tamed, served or duplicated. BEAST, you hear me?

Best Aerial Telly betting tip: Mayweather on points at 2.14

It was another astounding betting year for Aerial Telly. One by one bookmakers fell at the feet of his towering handicapping prowess. He’s a beast who just keeps coming. Many thought Mayweather would try and make a point and knock Marquez out but Aerial Telly brought to bear his magnificent knowledge of the sport of boxing, his unique insight into human nature, psychology and metaphysics and correctly predicted that Mayweather would safety first his way to a wide decision. Extraordinary.

TV pie of the year: Courtney Ford in Dexter

“Pum-pum come, pum-pum go but Jesus Christ remains” said Lee “Scratch” Perry and this was never more true than in 2009 when a ribald selection of pie passed across our screens. Michelle Forbes was alarming as the loopy maenad MaryAnn Forrester in True Blood, Maggie Siff foxed her way through Sons of Anarchy and Summer Glau from Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles can never be counted out of any pie contest. It would be criminally remiss of Aerial Telly not to mention Cylon pie Tricia Helfer and Grace Park slutting it up on Battlestar Galactica. But it was Courtney Ford’s turn as Christine Hill, the pushy nutjob reporter on Dexter, who got the nod for this most coveted of awards. This elfin strumpet found her way into Detective Quinn’s bed and into our hearts as the Little Reporter Who Could (be a dangerous psychopath).

So there you have it. If you weren’t mentioned during these awards it means that you SUCK. Aerial Telly sees all time in an instant and was far from impressed with your contribution. Another year draws to a close and another decade expires. The noughties were very much the decade of Aerial Telly. They were the decade of fearlessly saying the unsayable, having the balls to put your money where your mouth is in the gambling markets, untold pum-pum, critical acclaim and monstrous success. You can’t second-guess, imitate or tangle with him. Your only hope is that by learning some of the fabulous lessons he offers you may become slightly less of a worthless turd. This is his gift to you.

Happy Christmas, shitbirds.

American drama: torturers, serial killers and other good guys

Check out Hollywood today. It's a heads-is-tails topsy-turvy world where the real talent goes into TV where they know they'll get more time, less interference and a better chance of realising their vision than in stupid lame-oh movies. Art's triumph over commerce was hard-won and came from a lot of risktaking and bold decisions but we now sit in the centre of a golden age of TV drama and that's largely down to HBO.

Because they achieved commercial success without compromising story or pandering to test groups HBO challenged orthodox beliefs about what TV could achieve across the board. Obviously subscription cable networks were inspired to follow suit but even big networks raised their game with shows like 24, Prison Break and Lost - pushing the envelope became the norm.

And yet you still get punks who say there's nothing good on the telly. Heinous rat bastards.

24 Season 4

If television is narcotics (and who can seriously argue that it is not?) then 24 is its crack cocaine - instantly addictive, bringing mayhem and destruction wherever it goes.

Kim has packed her 48 tight T-shirts and gone to Europe with Chase - apparently recovered from having his hand hacked off by Jack in the previous season’s finale (long story - there was this briefcase, see - motherfucker, they sewed it back on, OK?)

We left season three with Jack blubbing like Apple Paltrow in his black SUV so it’s not surprising that season four kicks off with Jack out of CTU and in the arms of a new lover. Meet Audrey: the daughter of Jack’s new boss, Defence Secretary James Heller.

Despite the three of them working together daddy doesn’t know about Jack and Audrey. “You’ll have to tell him”, Jack tells Audrey, “He’s a very shrewd man”

Not that shrewd, apparently. There’s sexual tension you can cut with a hacksaw and daddy dearest still thinks Audrey goes home alone.

You’d think the women entering into Jack’s life would be a bit more cautious. Just a brief glimpse at his shagiography - Wife: Terri. Kidnapped, raped, then killed by Jack’s Lover: Nina. Kidnapped, evil, jailed, freed, evil then killed. By Jack.

And then there’s Daughter: Kim, kidnapped more often than Penelope Pitstop, the girl is a walking loon magnet, menaced by everything from right-wing militia gonks to wild cougars.

As if all that wasn’t bad enough her CTU Field Ops boyfriend has his hand hacked off. By Jack.

But still the velvet voice and 5 o’clock stubble at three in the morning wins them over. Living with a lightning rod for trouble has its advantages. You get to go places you’ve never seen (inside the boot of an SUV), meet interesting people (international terrorists, rapists) and I hear CTU has a bitching pension plan (not that you’ll see the benefit of it, the average life-expectancy of Jack’s girlfriends being that of an asbestos mining mayfly).

Did I mention Jack’s not above a bit of torture and mutilation to get the job done - slaughtering and decapitating a child pornographer to win the trust of a criminal (the head delivered in a holdall - nice!) So it’s hardly surprising that two episodes into season four he’s knee-capping a terror suspect (yes that’s right, suspect).

All you have to worry about at Guantanamo Bay is the occasional human pyramid and barking dog. I’m sure Jack’s victim was longing for that kind of treatment as he picked his patella out of the carpet. You know when you’ve been Bauered, fool! The ICU nurses are a dead giveaway.

The biggest problem 24 faces is the law of diminishing returns. Season one had the President threatened with assassination and Jack’s wife and daughter held hostage. Season two had the threat of a nuclear bomb killing 1 million people. Season three had the prospect of millions dying through biological terrorism. Where do you go from there?

Season four has nothing like the impact of the first three and it suffers because of it. This is the ultimate impact television, after all. Slow-paced character development is not on - even if we have the magnificent Chloe with her wrecking ball abruptness and hysterical lack of social skills. At the moment, four episodes in, it feels like we’re treading very familiar ground.

Now that the threats are not as exciting, the focus will come back on the main attraction. In the end, it always comes back to Jack - velvet voiced nonce decapitator, homicidal hand-hacker and modern day superhero.

He makes his own rules.

The verdict on 24: The light may be dimming but it’s still outshines most of the rest.

Marks out of 10: 7.5

24 series finale

Smarter than its critics, bolder than its peers, wild at heart and weird on top, 24 came out for the final round swinging and went out slugging with a fine, gutsy and moving finale that showed up Lost’s ending as the jizz slurping fudge Armageddon it really was. Was it as great as The Shield finale? Naw papi, but The Shield is The Shield and very few things touch that masterpiece in any area. What it was was thrilling, true to the characters and consistent with both the show’s ethic and canon.

It began as a 24 finale always should: with Jack on a killing spree, fatally wounded, rogue as fuck, pursued by the Feds, CTU, the Army and Government. In possession of a data card with a recording of Logan and Suvarov providing irrefutable evidence of the Big Mad Conspiracy, he’s also slaughtering a slew of dudes but no one you would really want to see taking another breath.

Assassinating the Russian President though? Now he’s really losing his mind, though on a personal level you can understand it. President Suvarov is behind the day’s terrorist attacks, Hussan’s killing and Renée Walker’s death. It was Renée being plugged right after Jack had put his cock in her that really toppled him over the edge. He was all “don’t Walker way Renée!”1 but the kid didn’t pull through. Yoink!

Incidentally, the peace process is still on track despite President Taylor (Hyacinth Bucket) telling President Dalia Hussan (Slumdog Shrillionaire) that she’ll be signing the treaty with Suvarov, her husband’s murderer. Dalia ain’t trying to hear this but when Taylor tells her she will nuke the IRK back to the Stone Age if she doesn’t, her hand is forced. Hussan reels away in fury as the rest of us wonder when Taylor grew a pair.

For now though it’s important that Chloe, Cole and Arlo get to Jack before Jason Pillar and his bonehead flunkies do. Jack’s way ahead of them though as he kidnaps Pillar, makes him stitch his fatal wound to make it marginally less fatal then chickens out on executing the motherfucker when Pillar starts blubbing about his six-year-old daughter. Never leave a Republican breathing, Jack. That was your first mistake.

Occupying a Lee Harvey Oswald sniper’s nest in a building opposite the UN, Jack waits to pop a cap in Suvarov. Chloe locates him by the power of potato knowledge and to thank her he knocks her out with the death grip and handcuffs her to a railing. After coming round, she manages to talk him down, having promised to do whatever it takes to expose the conspiracy. It turns out this involves shooting Jack in the tits which, despite his exhortations, Chloe really doesn’t want to do. But when Jack moves to shoot himself, Chloe plugs him proper. He survives because he’s Jack. Pillar takes control of the scene but not before Jack bites a chunk out of his ear. It really fucking hurts.

And Chloe? She gets the data card but can’t quite upload it to CTU servers in time before she’s apprehended. Before you know it, it’s in the hands of President Taylor. She watches Jack’s emotional goodbye to Kim^2 that he recorded on the same card making it feel like a family wedding videotaped over with secret footage of the Kennedy assassination. She feels wretched. She’s betrayed Jack, the American people and everything she ever stood for. If only there were some way she could make amends, come clean and square this, the roundest of circles?

Yeah, that’s right. At the treaty signing, President Taylor makes a dramatic public confession, refusing to sign the document, dropping herself, Suvarov, Logan and the rest of the traitors in the deepest of shit. Nice work Madam soon-to-be-impeached President but do you think you could take time out from your Tiger Woods moment to get a phone call to Charles Logan’s goons? They are just about to execute Jack Bauer. Madam President? Madam President?

Patched through in lightening time by Chloe’s technological genius, President Taylor halts the execution, says “sorry for all that” to Jack, admits he was right and tells him to get the fuck out of there because the Russians, Americans and the Intergalactic Alliance are all after a piece of his ass. Wounded but walking, Jack agrees this would be a good idea but wants one final word with Chloe. Deep breath, guys.

This is the final scene of 24 and it’s glorious. Jack is on video surveillance as Chloe speaks to him on the phone at CTU. They speak like parting lovers. He makes her promise she will protect his family while he’s on the run. Tears run down her potato face as she gives her word to do her spuddy autistic best. “Chloe...” Jack velvets “When you first came to CTU... I never thought it was gonna be you that would cover my back all those years” Chloe is in bits. She can just manage “Good luck Jack” before the call ends. She pulls it together to say “Bring the drone back to base - whatever happened here didn’t happen, you understand? Shut it down” - the final line of dialogue on 24. 00.00.03 - 00.00.02 - 00.00.01 and it’s OUT.

Hell of a show, hell of an ending. If you want pious backslapping circle jerk liberal orthodoxy fuck off and watch The West Wing. 24 brought the motherfucking drama and only liars, whores and fools deny its brilliance.

The verdict on 24 Series finale: A triumph.

Marks out of 10: 8

1 Fuck you. I’ve waited three years to tell that joke.

2 Eliza Cuthbert does not show and nor do any of her T-shirts.

Dexter Season 4 finale

Damn. They didn’t hold back with this one. Dexter insiders promised a “game changer” in the run up to the finale and they were not playing. As Dexter’s fourth season began you wondered how many seasonal big bads they could contrive, particularly after the tough-to-follow Ice Truck Killer, Miguel Prado, The Skinner and Loopy Lila. But Dexter kept coming strong with its most horrible villain to date, intriguing subplots, good character development and a shocking, eye-watering climax that left you wondering where on earth they go next season. However it plays out, it’s not going to be cosy.

But let’s deal with the story so far. Meet Arthur Mitchell (John Lithgow). He’s your regular family guy. Adoring wife, loving son and daughter, good Christian, builds homeless shelters around the country - he’s also America’s most successful serial killer with a career stretching over three decades. This Arthur guy? Full of surprises.

It’s a complex story how he got here but the basic facts are these. Watching his sister in the shower aged 10, in a weird pervy potential serial killer kind of way, he startles her causing her to slip, break the shower door, severe her femoral artery and bleed to death. Arthur takes it badly and his mother takes it worse, jumping off a warehouse roof to her death. Arthur takes it badly and his father takes it worse, beating his son mercilessly. Arthur takes this badly and bludgeons his father to death. His father takes it - well, he doesn’t have much say in the issue.

So Arthur, he’s all about taking things badly. To deal with his childhood trauma he kills people in sequence thus: a young woman in a bathtub (just like sis), a mother of two forced to fall to her death (just like ma) and the father of two bludgeoned to death (just like da). This goes back decades in cities all over America and it is such a bizarre M.O. nobody would ever think of connecting the crimes.

Nobody, that is, except Special Agent Frank Lundy, serial killer hunter extraordinaire and Deb’s former lover. He’s back in Miami on the trail of Trinity and back in bony Deb’s panties soon enough. They look like they are finally going to be happy and prove to everyone that age gap relationships can work just swell. You can probably guess how that ends. After leaving a hotel they are gunned down by a mystery bastard. Deb is wounded, Lundy dies.

And what about that Debs? What is it with her and men? Her fiancé Brian Moser turned out to be the Ice Truck Killer, tried to Ice Truck Kill-her and wound up getting killed by Dexter. Then lover Anton gets abducted and a nice patch of flesh skinned off him by the Skinner and now Lundy gets shot to death. Three from three. This girl is a fucking jinx.

With his sister plugged it makes the Trinity case personal for Dexter who uses Lundy’s case files to identify Arthur Mitchell as Trinity. Dexter befriends Arthur under the pseudonym Kyle Butler and begins working with him on the shelters he builds for the homeless, (sites that double as a tomb for the bodies). All our hero has to do is wait with the right opportunity to stick a syringe in his neck and dispatch the beast for good.

Yet when the opportunity presents itself he doesn’t act. He dallies and, yes, dillies because he wants to learn how a monster just like him can successfully have a family and blend in so seamlessly. Yeah, don’t worry about him killing again, Dex, you just play Crouching Tiger Hidden Cunt with the Bible Belt Fred West and learn your life lessons, we’ll all be FINE. The discovery that he kicks off the murder cycle by abducting a 10 year old boy (just like sister shower watching Arthur) and burying him in concrete should not unduly concern us. He kills in fours, not threes but he's still Trinity OK? It’s too late for a name change and Quadrangle sounds just shit.

But while Dexter’s pissing about with his new pal, newly crowned TV pie of the year Christine Hill (Courtney Ford), is fucking Quinn to get information on Trinity. Some journalists will do anything for a story although to be fair to Christine she is secretly Arthur Mitchell’s daughter, the murderer of Frank Lundy and shooter of Deb so let’s not rush to call her journalistic integrity into question. Homegirl had issues.

Dexter wants to bring Arthur to justice himself rather than the Miami Dade PD and spends some time successfully throwing the fuzz off the scent. Once the inevitable happens and Arthur discovers Dexter’s real identity and the police find out about Arthur, the urgency intensifies. The final episode is a three-way game of cat and mouse that ends with Dexter finally getting his man and giving his mutilated body a burial at sea - the Dexter speciality. All that is left is to join Rita on a romantic vacation. The question posed at the start of the series is answered. Dexter can be a family man after all.

But hold up. When Dexter returns home to pack some things he listens to a message from Rita saying she had to return to pick up her ID. He rings her back. Her mobile rings from her nearby bag. He hears the sound of their infant son Harrison crying. It’s coming from the bathroom. Whoa. You don’t think...?

Yep, they went there. Arthur got to Rita, cut her throat in a bathtub and left Harrison in a pool of blood in a chilling parallel of Dexter’s childhood trauma. “Born in blood” Dexter voiceovers as he picks up his son “Both of us.” Not so much a downbeat ending as a beatdown ending. It hits you like a framing hammer to the skull. That Arthur: full of surprises.

I’m not gonna lie and say that my heart lept for joy whenever Rita appeared on screen but she meant something to Dexter. She was his final ‘fuck you’ to his father; the definitive rebuke to his maxim that like Cain or a Kooks fan the killer must walk the earth alone. And now we know the truth: the dark passenger will always be his master. It’s a cold, cold ending and kind of brilliant.

It’s been a powerful season throughout and you have to give John Lithgow a lot of credit for that. His Trinity is compellingly repulsive and in a show where everyone leads double lives, watching the walls between family man and killer break down has been one of the highlights of 2009 TV. Dexter is a show with a great premise that handles its themes with great care and has enough balls to hit you where it hurts when you least expect it. Mark this one up as a triumph.

The verdict on Dexter Season 4 finale: Mass murder just got serious.

Marks out of 10: 9

Harper’s Island

In Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel Ten Little Niggers, 10 murderers are invited to an island (Nigger Island if you’re asking - I bet property prices are through the roof there) where they are killed one by one by a mystery assailant. Of course in today’s politically correct times you can’t call murder victims niggers, you have to call them “African-Americans”. Only you can’t call them African-Americans because they changed the title to Ten Little Indians. Only you can’t call them Indians, you have to call them “Native Americans”. Anyway, it’s a classic of the genre, sold over 100 million copies and has been subject to numerous adaptations and remakes. Harper’s Island is something of a tribute to Christie’s genius, numerous slasher films and quite possibly Celebrity Love Island. How can it fail?

Abby Mills (Irish actress Elaine Cassidy channeling Neve Campbell in Scream) is returning home to Harper’s Island for the wedding of her childhood friend Henry (Christopher Gorham) to foxy heiress Trish (Katie Cassidy). Abby hasn’t been so big on Harper’s Island ever since her mother was murdered and strung up on a tree branch along with five other unfortunate bastards seven years previously by crazyman John Wakefield. But it’s her best friend’s wedding - what a fantastic opportunity to leave the past behind, reconcile with her father Charlie (Jim Beaver) and just get on with the rest of her life.

The problem with that admittedly laudable idea is that THERE’S ONLY A FRICKIN’ MURDERER loose on the island murdering. It’s almost as if murdering murderer John Wakefield has returned. But how could that be? Charlie Mills shot and killed him seven years ago. Or did he? Dude, I’m telling you - he’s buried on the island^1. Or is he?

While you ponder that, numerous subplots keep the narrative going. Thomas Wellington (Richard Burgi), father of the bride and real estate mogul tries his best to stop his daughter from marrying the pleb; douchebag best man Sully (Matt Barr) tries to steal animatronic Barbie doll Chloe (Cameron Richardson) from her gimpy British borefriend Cal (Adam Campbell); Abby flirts with ex borefriend Jimmy (C.J. Thomason); oddball infant Madison (Cassandra Sawtell) tortures snails and bonds with Henry’s weird goth brother J.D. But which of them is the murderer?

Aerial Telly knows but isn’t telling. What he will say is that this is a very enjoyable, taut, pacy chiller that works its way through standard horror conventions with reverence and a wicked sense of humour. The deaths are memorable. Cousin Ben gets sliced and diced by the ship’s propeller; Wellington get a headspade^2 to the skull; Richard gets frickin’ lickin’ harpooned. Tenacious survivors, an impressively sadistic Big Bad and annoying characters getting summary justice in the form of their hideous slapstick deaths all make Agatha Christie proud. The daft racist.

The verdict on Harper’s Island: The most dangerous island life since Lost.

Marks out of 10: 7.5

1 Yes that makes all kinds of sense - I bet that went down well with the victims’ relatives

2 The heaviest instrument used when cutting up a whale. Don’t get telling me you don’t learn anything watching slasher flicks

Lost Season 3 finale

Holy fucking shit. What an episode. The two hour finale of Lost’s third season was as good a single episode of TV as I’ve seen in years. It thrilled and delighted at every turn with a stunning reveal at the end that got up in your grill and was, like, “motherfucker, what?” Season three has been a huge triumph for Lost after it tried our patience to breaking point in season two. As we’ve got to know The Others we’ve learnt that they are just as much stranded on the island as the Lostaways, they just have the lay of the land better. They’re still taking hostages, busting chops and indulging their obstetrics obsession but you get the distinct impression they’re not really happy in their island paradise. But they still all need to die - never forget that.

While Jack leads the Oceanic 815 crew to the radio tower and possible rescue, Jin, Sayid, and Bernard stay behind on the beach to open up a can of assrape on The Others as they come to abduct the pregnant women. With an armful of dynamite they send seven Others to meet their maker before their inevitable capture by Tom and the boys. Still, about time the Others had some casualties - eat shit you beardie cult bastards.

It’s not looking good for the Craphole Island 3 as Ben orders their execution by walkie-talkie (he’s busy trying to persuade Jack that the rescue idea will end badly). But just as The Others are debating the ethics of the murders Hurley bursts out of the jungle in the Dream Machine van like the A-Team and fucks one of the fuckers the fuck up with bumper on bone action. The diversion gives Juliet and Sawyer the chance to disarm the others and Sayid the chance to snap someone’s neck with his legs. I bet Saddam Hussein wishes The Republican Guard were all as badass as Sayid. Tom, knowing when he’s on to a loser, surrenders. Sawyer, knowing when he’s talking to a cunt, plugs the fucker, much to the shock of Juliet and Hurley. “That’s for taking the kid from the raft” he explains. A fair point.

Speaking of the kid on the raft, Walt turns up grown-up by about three years to get John Locke out of his mass grave. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Walt went off with his daddy on the boat. But this is Craphole Island and while other kids follow the laws of physics, Walt disnae (geddit??) But even more remarkably Charlie’s suicide mission to Push The Button actually works and the ship that has been trying to find the island gets a signal, transmits a message and our heroes celebrate their imminent rescue. But we know that never works, right?

The finale flashback seemed fairly pointless. A boozy, painkiller blitzed Jack turding around making a jack ass of himself, presumably in the thrall of that sort who dumped him. Yet right at the end we go through the looking-glass. Jack meets up with Kate. This is actually a flash forward - after rescue from the island. Jack can’t cope with post island life - he flies constantly in the hope of crashing to get back to Craphole Island. Kate just looks hot and smoulders, but a single solitary tear suggest that she too may be getting island withdrawal. Wow. They actually make it off the island.

There are very few shows that handle the big episodes like Lost. The last thing anyone was expecting was a successful rescue and the revelation was brilliantly handled with the disguised flash forward with a suicidal Jack all ready to throw himself off a bridge because he misses walking around in cut-off jeans, never getting laid and being kidnapped once a fortnight. Takes all sorts, eh? Lost has set up season four in such a way as to make it totally unmissable. It premieres in February 2008. Seriously, I cannot wait.

The verdict on Lost Season Three Finale: Free at last.

Marks out of 10: 9.5

Lost series finale

“Dr Shepherd - what’s the worst that could happen?”

OK, you’ve got your series finale. Two things have to work. It must be logically satisfying (loose threads left in the story picked up and woven together) and emotionally satisfying (love, death, happiness, misery and redemption all responsibly portioned out). Lost concentrated solely on the latter and screwed it up spectacularly with a crass, bloated and ultimately meaningless finale that took a two-hour, eye bulging, trousers-round-the-ankles dump on the show’s legacy. They brought together the couples we love (Sun and Jin), the couples we tolerate (Jack and Kate), the couples we don’t buy (Sawyer and Facelift), the couples who don’t exist (Claire and Charlie) and the couples who everyone had forgotten existed proving they were always poorly conceived, badly written and thrown in as an afterthought (Shannon and Sayid) and the couple who walked straight out of a Richard Curtis script Two Timelines and a Coprophiliac (Desmond and Penny Future Knickers). The only people satisfied by all this are Desmund&Penni 4 EVAH!! fan fic writing goons and the kind of emotionally crippled shitsack who only turns on their television set to dissolve into tears.

The main points of the ending are as follows. The island is real. Everyone on it either died there or lived fruitful lives to die later where they went to a nice alternate reality Purgatory (the season-long flash sideways where Oceanic 815 never crashes, Desmond keeps running over Locke and Charlie is miraculously still a twat) where they all meet up in a big stupid church where they move on together into whatever comes after the thing that comes after death. Capiche?

They find each other by those montage memory flashbacks, triggered by physical touch with the one they ruvved in their island life. People need to remember, let go and move on you see. This is all explained to us by Jack’s dead, pissed dad who apparently is some kind of tour guide of the spirit world (Jim Bean presumably his speciality). So far, so Highway to Heaven and so very pointless.

In the meanwhile-back-on-the-island timeline, a series of events now totally redundant and of no dramatic consequence at all take place regarding all that smoke monster destroying the island nonsense. Jack has the fat lad drink some magic water like Big John, Little John so he can now protect the island - a reign we will never see and therefore never care about. Hurley as Oliver Cromwell Lord Protector of Nothing. Cos-mic. There’s a lot of Starship Enterprise hitting an asteroid belt style rocky camera effects as the island quite literally loses its cork (turns out it was a real cork in the hole not a metaphorical one). Give me a break.

Locke and Doc have a meaningless turd joust over the island’s holiest of holes. Locke fatally wounds Jack but ends up dead at the bottom of the cliff after Kate shoots him in the tits. Elsewhere on the Island of Fatuous Redundancies, Lapidus flies a few of them off by the power of duct tape. Yeah, whatever.

The couples killed it from me. Claire never wanted Charlie to put his cock in her and it’s never love if that’s not there. It’s what you feel for a lame elk you’ve just run over as you prepare to curb stomp it out of its misery. Not only is Dominic Monaghan small and ugly with no charisma, he can’t act and Charlie is a horribly written character complete with a back story that demonstrated a stunning ignorance of rock music, Englishness and group dynamics containing every 10 minute MTV feature on Oasis cliché they could be bothered to dredge-up. Every time I saw that needy smackhead shitbird I wanted to kill him. And of course there’s a Driveshaft concert in Purgatory. That first bar of You All Everybody will get you heading towards the light in no time.

Sun and Jin I gave a fuck about. I always did. They always handled that beautifully. But we all know Sawyer should be with Kate and Juliet with Jack. And as for the risible Sayid and brotherfucker reunion - I do not care and neither does anyone else. They even had Boone in the queue for heaven, a man whose death elicited not a flicker of concern and whose reappearance not a flicker of comprehension. Who was his great love - himself?

Sentiment driven fan-fic hook-ups scored with stirring strings are still utterly trite. I can barely count the storytelling cop outs and they just moved the St-Peter-in-the-courtyard thrice-denied Purgatory ending to a different timeline, like Benjamin moved the island - because he all-of-a-sudden, just like magic could and it was the easy option.

Interestingly, the three island black guys Taller Ghost Walt, Michael and Mr Eko were nowhere to be seen in heaven’s waiting-room and no Daniel, Charlotte, Miles, Richard or Frank either (not that I cared about any of those cracka-ass crackers).

The only thing I really enjoyed about this was seeing Vincent the dog who held up his role in this shaggy dog story very well, lying down beside Jack as his life expired. Nice dogging, Vince.

“Not leaving. Moving on.” said Christian Shepherd. Probably best if we do the same.

The verdict on Lost series finale: Plane crash end to a great show.

Marks out of 10: 3

Mad Men

In Mad Men, AMC’s 60’s advertising drama Christina Hendricks plays Joan Holloway, femme fatale and office manager at Sterling Cooper advertising agency. Where does one start with Christina Hendricks? From the moment you see her you’re thinking of ways to impregnate her. Her body is a walking diorama of feminine beauty, a pieorama if you will. Imagine if Marilyn Monroe really had curves. Imagine if Jayne Mansfield really had a rack. Imagine if Katharine Hepburn’s hair was really red. Imagine if Jennifer Lopez really had ass. Imagine if the young Julie Christie really was pretty. Imagine if Mae West really had ‘tude. Imagine if these qualities came together in one piece of pie: a glorious treacly, sticks-to-your-fingers, treacle-coloured piece of treacle tart warmed in the oven and served with melting ice cream. Well that pie exists and its name is Christina Hendricks. She walks among us like a colossus, cracking flags and breaking hearts with every step.

Christina Hendricks is the woman they were talking about in The Song of Solomon. I never really understood that line about breasts like twin gazelle until now. When she swings her hips her ass pulls planets out of orbit. In Rome, men impaled themselves on railings just to attract her fleeting attention before they died. During her visit to the Orient, Chinamen gouged out their eyes on the off-chance she would want to piss in their ocular cavities. Her skin is so white you can’t look directly at it without going blind. Wild yak graze on the foothills of her mountainous breasts. Her belly has its own postcode.

She’s got something between her legs that would make a dead man come. Her pussy drips pure honey - a golden river down her magnificent ivory thighs. She is an anatomical marvel. Her body is a feat of civil engineering as impressive in its own way as The Golden Gate Bridge, The Millau Viaduct and The Birmingham Rotunda. You look at it and wonder “how can that stay upright?” Sniffing her panties has the same effect that Jean-Baptiste releasing the miraculous scent did in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Her cunt juice is the elixir that will bring mankind together. She is a MAGNIFICENT BEAST of a woman.

Anyway, back to Mad Men. It’s a show about advertising men in the early 60’s working in Madison Avenue, created by former Sopranos scriptwriter Matthew Weiner. It’s not quite as good as it should be but it’s still pretty good. Jon Hamm plays Don Draper, the brilliant creative director of the operation who hides a dark past. Peggy Olsen (Elisabeth Moss) is Draper’s secretary, a girl with a heart of gold who becomes the first female copywriter at Sterling Cooper since the war. Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) is the horrible spoilt young upstart who fucks Peggy then fucks himself by being a slimy untrustworthy shitheel.

The period detail is remarkable. And by that I mean “every fucker smokes”. Everyone. Everywhere. All the time. I’m amazed any of them made it out of the 60’s if they smoked like that. Beyond that it’s good to look at, feels authentic and is an enjoyable reflection on America’s recent past.

The verdict on Mad Men: It ain’t The Sopranos but it’ll do.

Marks out of 10: 7.5

Mad Men Season 2

Everything’s gone horribly wrong in the second season of Mad Men. Not that it was ever a rose garden but our principal’s lives are getting darker, twisted and just plain wrong. Scratch the surface of every dream and you find a nightmare. Peggy has a son now, though no one at Sterling Cooper must ever know and she never sees him. Don’s infidelity has been found out and now he lives out of a hotel room and only sees his kids at weekends. Salvatore is still the gayest gay that ever gayed yet is still buried in the deepest of marital closets. Can’t anyone be happy?

Also having a hard time of it is Pete Campbell whose father dies in a plane crash. He seems curiously unaffected though I suppose that’s to be expected of the devious blackmailing little shit. He tries unsuccessfully for a child with his beautiful but dumb wife. These are unforgiving times for childless couples, particularly with the fecundity of Harry Crane thrust in your face. What Pete doesn’t know, of course, is that he is already father to Peggy’s secret child. Pete remains a gigantic gaping asshole but it’s credit to Vincent Kartheiser that there remains a sliver of sympathy for the old money cad.

Though that no money cad Paul Kinsey’s worries are less pressing, revolving as they do around finding opportunities to show off his black girlfriend to his chums. In an age when you’re defined by your accessories a black girl on your arm says you’re a little bit unconventional, a little bit edgy and, in Paul’s case, a little bit of twat because, as Joan guesses in a heartbeat, he’s only dating her for the cool value.

That’s admen for you - no one lives authentically. Everybody lies, especially to themselves. Advertising is a lie, an industry peopled by liars lying. The impeccable swank of Don Draper papers over an emotionally butchered young man living in mortal fear of the truth. He’s not Don Draper - he’s Richard Whitman. Born a bastard from his abusive father’s fling with a whore; stealing a dead man’s identity like Principal Skinner in The Simpsons; secrets and lies are all Don Draper has ever known.

But surely good old boy Freddy Rumsen is still trundling along OK? WRONG, assholes. Freddy’s drinking finally brings him down when he pisses his pants right before an important meeting. He gets shitcanned and Peggy gets promoted as a result. Poor Peggy finds this tough to take - Freddy was the first guy to ever believe in her. In Mad Men even joyous events leave a bitter aftertaste.

So pity Draper’s wife, beautiful doomed Betty. You know Betty ain’t right when she persistently flirts with Glen Bishop, the mad 10 year-old boy who wants to fuck her. “I hate you!” he shouts when she finally calls his errant mother to the house. “I know” says Betty sadly. You can’t be surprised, girl. 10 years old and he’s already learning the harsh lesson of mixed messages from women. Of course, if that was the 10-year-old Aerial Telly he would have hit that in no time, knowing how to read women practically from birth. Motherfucker, you don’t want to know the women Aerial Telly made sex offenders out of. 1

Mad Men remains beautiful to look at and not just because of recently crowned TV Pie of the Year Christina Hendricks. From the gorgeous opening sequence with the silhouetted ad exec hurtling 9/11 jumper style to his doom past the images of early 60s Americana through to the double-breasted suits, fedoras and pleated skirts, it’s a show designed with a rare aesthetic sensibility and an obsessive attention to detail.

Mad Men is about the gap between surface and reality. It’s a parable about what happens when lying becomes your life. Everyone is losing control just when they need to be in control most. Happiness is a myth, contentment is a lie and the American dream has an underside as cruel and disturbing as any Japanese arthouse horror flick. This is the Mad Men moral. You eat shit all your life and then you die alone. So fuck you.

The verdict on Mad Men Season 2: New and improved.

Marks out of 10: 8

1 Something sounds off about this sentence but it’s true so fuck you.

Prison Break Season 2 premiere

“What’s got 16 legs, 15 hands and keeps looking over its shoulder?”

We counted down the days like children awaiting Christmas. When it came, the return began with cadaverous FBI agent Alexander Mahone (William Fichtner) at a press conference quoting from the on-the-run journal of John Wilkes Booth, President Lincoln’s killer. It took the authorities 12 days to find the assassin, Mahone tells the assembled hacks, and in that time he writes of how the criminal’s neuroses are “magnified by flight”. Mahone sees parallels between Booth and the Fox River escapees. “In 140 years the escaped man has not changed”. He must be starting to whiff a bit by now?

Oh Prison Break; how do I love thee? Lots and lots, that’s how. Unconditionally, eternally, irrationally. This show is so fucking good. Having successfully executed the world’s most complicated escape plan Michael Schofield, his meathead brother Lincoln “I never did them things” Burrows and six other convicted scrotes are running around like a swarm of blue-arsed flies avoiding the pack of pissed off screws on their trail.

In the tradition of The Fugitive, the Feds’ man Mahone tries to get inside Michael’s head to sniff out his quarry. There are obvious parallels between the two men. Like Michael, Mahone is a sensitive cultured boy driven by an obsessive attention to detail and a consuming need to fix things. Maybe he has low latent inhibition as well? It wouldn’t surprise me. Intriguingly, we see him popping pills from a compartment inside his pen in this episode. We like our pill-popping TV characters here at Aerial Telly and can only speculate on their significance. Is he dying, addicted, taking an E? Because we need an acid house revival like we need our toes chopped off with pruning shears.

Mahone quickly figures that Michael’s tattoo is the key to unravelling the labyrinthine plan. And as Michael and the boys head towards the cemetery for a change of clothes hidden in a grave, Mahone is figuring out their whereabouts by decoding some writing from Michael’s tattoo. It’s a close shave for the boys as Mahone gives chase only to watch them blend into the civilian morass of Cuntcake, Illinois. He looks mad vexed that they got away but you know this shit’s not over.

In civvy street Veronidurrr, the world’s dumbest real-estate lawyer, uncovers NOT DEAD Terence Steadman locked up in a country house. She gets herself killed by phoning the police and being intercepted by Bigger Boys who figure she’s more trouble than she’s worth - a conclusion many of us reached by the end of the pilot in season one.

Meanwhile, TV’s favourite baby rapist T-Bag was cut loose by the gang in the season one finale when they cut loose his hand with an axe. Having stolen an icebox from some campers to keep his hand cool T-Bag decides it’s time to get reattached to his errant digits. So naturally he goes to an Indian veterinary surgeon with his proposal. The Indian vet (played by Apu from The Simpsons) is understandably reluctant what with him not having a fucking clue how to do it and all but T-Bag assures him of a sorry end if he does not make with the impromptu surgery. If only he had the presence of mind to challenge him to a game of stone, paper, scissors. At least T-Bag now knows what the sound of one hand clapping sounds like.

Lovely, lovely Dr Sarah Tancredi is recovering from her overdose to face the music over the possibility that she may have just maybe left the Infirmary door open on purpose for the escape posse in the vain hope of getting some Tattooed Low Latent Inhibition Man Cock from Michael in return. Being a recovering addict, she’s no stranger to poor choices in men. She needs a man like Aerial Telly to give her the kind of pelvis rattling wookie walloping that heroin simply can’t match. She knows my number.

It’s a terrific starter for ten from Prison Break and we expected no less. It set up the series premise perfectly - the battle of wits between Michael and Mahone, the continuing political conspiracy and the battle to get Westmoreland’s buried loot. There will be more intricately weaved plot contrivances, innovative twists, jaw drop shocks and more of Michael’s signature yampy plans in store. It will thrill and appal us in equal measure. Very few shows justify our love with such ball-breaking consistency.

The verdict on Prison Break Season 2 premiere: Tramps like this - baby, they were born to run

Marks out of 10: 9

Spartacus: Blood and Sand Season 1 finale “Kill Them All”

“Kill them all”. Thus spake Spartacunt, husband, gladiator, Thracian legend. He’s really got no time for Romans, having been shafted by them his entire life and the final straw was finding out that his wife was murdered on the orders of that rat fuck Batiatus. Now it’s payback time. A season’s worth of blood, betrayal and lust on Spartacus: Blood and Sand came to the boil in a meticulously organised script executed with the boldness and flair we’ve come to expect from this show. Hack-and-slash melodrama it may be but showrunner Steven S. DeKnight is Buffyverse alumni. He knows how to tell a story.

For the slave rebellion Spartacunt proposes to go ahead, multiple pieces need to fall into place and the motivations are brilliantly worked out. Why would gladiators risk their lives for a doomed rebellion? Under the new patronage of Gaius Claudius Glaber the ludus is a frenzied hive of Roman ass whippings - brutality reigns as never before. Even doomed rebellion is preferable to this.

Lucretia finding out about Crixus slipping his Gallic schlong to Naevia now means she desires Crixus’s end at the hands of Spartacunt in their death match. The two fruits discuss the proposed rebellion before the bout and Crixus is agin it but they nonetheless swear to honour pledges to each other upon the showdown’s completion: Spartacunt victorious will see Naevia located and Crixus victorious will kill Battyarsetits. Now we have a fight.

Intrigue yet piles on intrigue as crunch time approaches. That clever cocksucker Ashur poisons Crixus’s meal before the fight to weaken him. Spartacunt reveals this to Crixus mid battle and the stubborn Gaul finally realises that his only way out of slavery is in his own strong arm to deliver. Guy coding Spartacunt with his eyes and a tap on the shield, Crixus is all “behold, your springboard!” and Spartacunt, like the crazy bastard he is, runs, rises and vaults all way on to the balcony to skewer the head of a smug Roman fuck on his arrival. It’s a neat way to travel and a glorious way to commence battle.

Although, calling it a battle might dignify the Roman efforts too much. The slaves put a hurting on their masters that shakes Rome itself. Battle? This is a fucking rout. Roman soldier limbs lie scattered like chicken wings at a barbecue as their nobility run screaming. Pukecreature gets kebabed by Crixus, aborting their baby in the process. “I would rather see it dead than suckle at your breast”. She looks at him all “You mean you’re breaking up with me?” before waddling off, her mortal wound trailing corn syrup, piss and raspberry juice after her, to go find Battyarsetits to give him one final piece of grief before she leaves this world. Tough break, Pukes.

Meanwhile, that little shit Numerius gets his from Varro’s widow Aurelia who stabs the 16-year-old dweeb to a lifeless bloody pulp for sealing her husband’s fate. When the confrontation between Spartacunt and Battyarsetits arrives it is a short affair with Batty’s defence for killing his wife a less than convincing one. “I gave you the means to accept your fate!” To which Sparts responds “And now you are destroyed by it” before slashing Batty’s throat as a dying Pukecreature looks on.

Oh and that little slut Ilithyia survives the slaughter by jamming the doors behind her as she escapes, condemning her fellow Romans to certain death. Proper little madam, that one.

You might wonder where Doctore is in all of this. The brother sides with the slaves once he hears from Crixus the full extent of Battyarsetits’s treachery. It a lot to take in but it’s only a one-hour show so after a full 10 seconds of soul-searching he hits the ground running and is quickly pummelling Ashur in swordplay. The crafty Syrian cheats death by hiding under some Roman corpses in the courtyard. Count on his re-emergence next season.

The rebellion succeeds. The house of Battyarsetits falls. The Roman soldiers are served Julienne style over cinnamon rice. The adjoining villa looks like it’s been attacked by a giant food processor. They have indeed killed them all. The brothers are free, free at last. So now what?

That’s for season two to decide (clue: mountain retreat then marching on Rome) but for now let’s give props to a terrific show that got better with each episode. Lurid to a fault, preposterous throughout and amped to its eyeballs it slowly began to mould its obvious influences into something unique. The show is a lot smarter than it looks. It takes considerable skill to pick up the number of loose threads it left dangling going into this finale and tie them all up without sacrificing credibility, character or story yet they do it brilliantly.

Starz showed their faith in a show by commissioning a second season before the first even premiered. Production was delayed as the (excellent) actor playing Spartacus, Andy Whitfield, underwent treatment for cancer. Aerial Telly wishes him a speedy recovery and grants the show his blessing and endorsement. How can it now fail?

The verdict on Spartacus: Blood and Sand Season 1 finale “Kill Them All”: Thrilling end to an impressive season.

Marks out of 10: 8

True Blood Season 2 finale

Michelle Forbes is a beast. Does anyone play villains with such relish? Would anyone dare? She’s been fortunate to get roles as well written as stone hearted war criminal Admiral Cain in Battlestar Galactica and now brings her pagan intensity to batshit crazy Maenad MaryAnn Forrester in True Blood but they were lucky to get her too. The statuesque Texan doesn’t just have something of the night about her. She is the night, the barren winter, handmaid of the Moon. Abandon all hope as ye enter her. She says that she cannot see MaryAnn Forrester as a villain and this is why she’s made True Blood’s second season such a blast.

And fun is what this girl is all about because the Maenad? Something of a party animal. She has Bon Temps literally under her spell with her wild bacchanalian orgies - violence, sodomy, tree fucking, just a few of the vices practised. But don’t just dismiss MaryAnn as some kind of gangbang scenester. Hell, no. She is fixing to bring forth god.

Which god? Why, the GOD WHO COMES. Dionysus to me and you. He and MaryAnn are to be wed and she’s going to offer the human sacrifice of the slightly more than human Sam Merlotte, bartender and shape shifter.

Naturally, we can’t have that so Bill hatches a terrific plan to deliver Sam into the clutches of MaryAnn: let Sam get captured and stabbed, have Sookie create a distraction, feed Sam his blood for a lightning fast recovery, get Sookie chased by MaryAnn, have Sam shapeshift into a celestial looking bull to fool MaryAnn and into thinking her horned god (a.k.a. the GOD WHO COMES) has come among them, take advantage of her excited state by having Sammy the Bull (no, not that one) gore the living shit out of her, impaling her heart and killing her to death

OK, I don’t really know where to begin on the logical, practical and timeline holes in this particular plan but I know my finishing point will be she’s SUPPOSED TO BE FUCKING IMMORTAL. If that was all it took why didn’t you knife her in the tits 12 episodes ago?

While you were at it you could have skewered Jason Stackhouse who continues to be one of TVs most slappable characters. Jason spent much of season two rising through the ranks of the Fellowship of the Sun, the vampophobe God botherers. Jason was treated like a brother by Fellowship head Rev. Steve Newlin and repaid his mentor’s trust and loyalty by getting into his wife’s panties when the first opportunity arose. Thanks, brother!

You can’t really blame Jason (and I like blaming him for everything). It’s not like Sarah Newlin took much persuading and it is very hard to turn down fresh pumpum when it’s placed on such a pretty platter. So fuck Rev Steve just like you fucked his wife, Jase. After all, he was planning to burn Godric alive in that weird ceremony. Godric ended up on a rooftop immolating himself for kicks at sunrise making Eric cry tears of pure blood. It was all quite moving.

That’s melodrama for you - hysteria, romance, heightened reality - making an art of the daft. In that tradition True Blood have turned in an artful, thrilling second season. It’s fitting that most of it revolves around sex because True Blood has always been filth - the filthiest filth currently muddying up our screens. But it’s well written filth so you just can’t resist. Some gibberish, it is so serious.1

The verdict on True Blood Season 2 finale: Oh Maenady, well you came and you gave without taking. But I sent you away.

Marks out of 10: 7.5

1 Thus spake Frank Black.

Gong intermission

Aerial Telly Awards 2010

Hey cocksmokers. It’s around that time of year where no account TV turkeys vote for Thanksgiving and surf towards the Aerial Telly velodrome for news of the annual awards. At first it’s a trickle but it quickly becomes a cascade as the television industry catches on that the only awards that ever have mattered or ever will matter are online in all their stark pitiless glory. Crippled by anxiety attacks and comfort masturbating as they look for their names, they end up either weeping with relief or screaming in horror as their careers are made and broken before their coke monged eyes. Because Aerial Telly is not some bought and sold TV critic sucking up to celebrity, drinking cocktails with feral TV scum, slurping media jizz as if life itself depended on it. Nor is Aerial Telly some public school fuck who wandered into television criticism by accident because he went to the right college at Oxford. No, Aerial Telly is a savage beast, an untamed, ungovernable monster who builds and destroys reputations like the interventionist God Nick Cave doesn’t believe in.

“Battle anybody - I don’t care who you tell” - thus spake LL Cool J and that’s exactly what you can expect when Aerial Telly is in the place. He doesn’t do telly - he is telly; begotten not made of one being the telly. Fuck you in both eye sockets if you doubt it.

Best show: Breaking Bad, AMC

It could easily have been Boardwalk Empire, Terence Winter’s ultra-slick Prohibition-era period piece, but AMC’s Breaking Bad continued its career through Albuquerque’s drug trade in a stunning third season that saw Walt decline further into moral torpor, revealed more of the intriguingly enigmatic drug lord Gus and introduced us to the terrifying Cousins, the most menacing villains on the box. Ballsy, principled and heartbreaking, the show was as taut and daring as it’s ever been in its three season run. When it dies, let its gravestone read: the show that WENT THERE.

Worst show: FlashForward, ABC

They lost consciousness; we lost our minds. Christ knows it had stiff competition - Phone Shop, The Persuasionists, The Prisoner all drank mare’s piss, swilled, gargled and swallowed - but nothing summed up the malaise of overblown tailspinning television in 2010 like GashBoreward. In taking a promising premise into some of the most fatuous territory television has ever broached, GnashJawMerde was a pioneer of conspiracy shit-eating that blazed a trail for blows like Rubicunt and The Event. In giving another outlet for Dominic Monaghan to creep everybody the fuck out with his goblin ears, SlashBoreturd wrote another chapter in one of the most baffling success stories in Hollywood. Lacking looks, talent and charisma, his career makes Kaspar Hauser’s appearance seem explicable. Sonya Walger’s future knickers of doom couldn’t save MashWhoregurd from its massively deserved shitcanning. Hilariously poor dialogue, Blowhindturd from Heroes style navelgazing and a signature sucky performance from lead acturd Blowseph Whines assured an early bath for BashYourBird and the sense of relief around the shiny planet called Earth was palpable.

Best performance by a male: Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes in Sherlock, BBC

Jon Hamm continued to captivate, Bryan Cranston was electric but Beenadick Cumdumpsnatch pulled off the thesp coup of the year by putting a fresh spin on the done-to-death private dick Sherlcock Blowmes. Charismatic, prickly and borglike, Cumdumpsnatch’s Holmes had a fantastic unpredictable energy. Dangerous, mercurial and whip-smart, he took in every molecule of his environment via his 360° chameleon vision with an arrogance that was engaging, not nausey. Never an easy task but Cummy nailed it as precisely as any acturd ever will.

Best performance by a female: Ruth Wilson as Alice Morgan in Luther, BBC

It was the best of shows, it was the worst of shows, but for the main Luther was a riot - an irresistible pleasure and that was down in no small part to Mad “she’s crazy” Alice played with manic glee by Ruth Wilson. The oddball Hannibal and Clarice relationship she had with John Luther was preposterous, funny and touching and Wilson will never have a better role. Endless Monkfish clichés and moody cop poses couldn’t rustify her love. She knew he was nitroglycerin but she wasnae listening.

Skankiest bangs on TV: Alessandra Torresani

Although Caprica went a little bit shite and couldn’t really complain about its cancellation its star Alessandra Torresani forged a role as a skanky banged, Queen of Slut Town with a series of eye-popping photo shoots and outfits that made her look a proper floozy cooze. No complaints were heard Casa Aerial.

TV pie of the year: Krysten Ritter as Lily Champagne in Gravity, Starz

Torresani may have had the skank but Krysten Ritter had the beauty and the bangs. As suicidal fuckhead Lily Champagne she foxed her way through Starz’s impressive but doomed Gravity with the easy grace you expect from a former boneypie model.

Best writer not called Aerial Telly: Shawn Ryan

When you’ve made the illest cop show in history you could be forgiven for resting on your laurels. But that’s just not how The Shield creator Shawn Ryan rolls. Coming back harder than ever with the magnificent Terriers on FX, Ryan proved once again he is one of the biggest and most slept-on talents in the industry. 2011’s The Chicago Code seems likely to keep his streak going. Beast.

Funniest bastard on the planet: Louis CK

Not content with releasing his kick ass Hilarious live DVD, Boston stand-up Louis CK confirmed his position as the comedian other comedians want to be - the best motherfucker out there - with his consistently brilliant Louie sitcom on Fx. Utterly fearless like a great stand-up should be, Louis CK brought it ‘til it stayed brung in 2010 winning an unlikely but much deserved second season for Louie in 2011.

Most unjustly culled show: Party Down

Balless, soulless, woman abuser Chris Albrecht ruined yet more chick’s lives when he cancelled the unimpeachable Party Down, (co-created by television god Rob Thomas) after taking over at Starz. It got two seasons when it deserved ten. I don’t care if nobody but the cast and crew themselves watched it - it DEMANDED to be made until it bankrupted everyone involved. Its memory lives on. Aerial Telly will keep it alive. Count on it.

Sci-fi: how the Cylons reinvented television

Aerial Telly believes in sci-fi. It's a genre that trades in big ideas, tends towards the philosophical and fantastical and likes to let the imagination run riot. It can also of course produce corny, ill disciplined, emotionally stunted writing and acting so bad it causes a stink you can smell from Mars.

Battlestar Galactica contained everything we already loved about sci-fi and added several things we never knew could exist in such a show. Respect is duly paid here.

And Doctor Poo gets the dilznick. It gets its salad tossed quite comprehensively everywhere else.

Battlestar Galactica Season 3

When Sci-Fi took onboard their reimagining of the Battlestar Galactica franchise they had a number of options. Camp it up and play it for laughs, create a reference laden nerd fest or make a serious attempt at grown-up drama. Thankfully, they chose the latter along the way making Starbuck a chick, the Cylons look human and Donnie Darko’s mom the President. So now Cylons have evolved and look just like you or I or any number of attractive Equity members.

Yes, that’s right broseph - Cylons are back and they’re hot. Particularly the Amazonian blonde known as Caprica 6 who used the power of cybernetic pussy to nuke the 12 Colonies and slaughter a jillion humans. Cylon ‘skinjobs’ walk amongst the humans like Soviet sleeper agents. It’s good to see this Cold War reference taking us right back to the Eighties although that’s really not generally a good thing.

Cylons are often referred to as toasters by the humans - a derogatory term the Cylons find deeply offensive. So if you’re a human be careful not to say it too loudly as they kind of have us by the balls at the moment. With the Cylon occupation of Nu Caprica in full effect it’s a good approximation of hell on Nu Earth. Humans are being picked up, detained and tortured with impunity by the Cylon boot boys. They even tear out our old favourite Colonel Tigh’s eye from its socket and show it to him. “It looked like a hard-boiled egg” he recalls. He’s grown a beard in captivity which is probably for the best as shaving without depth perception is a bitch.

But what Tigh’s lost in ocular capacity he makes up for with grisly determination, leading the insurgents in their guerrilla campaign against the toasters. Suicide bombings in cafe-bars and graduation ceremonies for the Uncle Tom human police force are among the rebels’ activities. This pisses the Cylons right off and they decide to get tough. Blimey. Apparently all those interrogating torturing guys were the liberal wing of Cylon political thought. “Round them up and shoot them” is the decision they reach. You've got to respect the classics.

Colonel Tigh only got out of captivity because his wife was shtupping the living shit out of senior toaster Cavil in exchange for his freedom. I hope those people who saw Ellen as the Lady Macbeth of Galactica are now suitably chastised. This is a girl who knows how to keep her marriage vows.

In a scarcely better predicament is Starbuck, living in an enforced marriage to Leoben, a toaster who she keeps killing who responds to this horrific domestic abuse by repeatedly downloading back into a perfect replica of his body (they can do that these days). And although they are not shtupping they have some kind of Stepford child whose purpose appears to be to mess with Starbuck’s heid mon, make her feel all maternal and domesticated so she’ll start sucking Breville Sandwich Toaster Cylon Man Cock. Though for the time being it’s safe to say that Homie Don’t Play That.

But don’t let that lead you into thinking that Jungle Fever has been wiped from the future. Inter species erotica is alive and well. They look human, and feel human so why the hell not? One product of this unholy union is the Cylon-human hybrid baby Hera born of the Cylon Sharon and human Helo. Hera is being raised in secret, away from Cylon eyes and the human hierarchy are amazed at her potential - I’d be quite happy if she has five settings, none of which burn my waffles.

Sci-Fi are keen to make this a brooding, philosophical update of the Battlestar Galactica story and it’s a very absorbing watch. There’s a gloomy claustrophobic feel on-board Galactica and all are trapped by their circumstances - and not just because they’re being chased across space by sociopath fascist robots that they created. The show likes pondering upon the moral ambiguities of the human condition. Commander Adama notes that in the rush to escape extinction humanity never really asked itself if it deserved to survive. The notion that the cosmos would be better off without humans is a recurring theme.

At its heart, the Battlestar Galactica myth is Frankenstein - man tormented by a monster of his own creation. Cylons act like the neglected, abused children they are. Humans look at Cylons and see their own reflection and they hate them for it. It’s as dysfunctional a relationship as you’ll find on TV and it’s providing a rich vein of character pieces and war stories showing that intelligent sci-fi is not an oxymoron.

The verdict on Battlestar Galactica Season 3: Impressive weird sci-fi vérité.

Marks out of 10: 8

Castrating Galactica - why Faceman needs to can it

Earlier this year Dirk Benedict wrote an article for Big Hollywood about Ronald D. Moore’s reimagining of Battlestar Galactica. Benedict has a unique perspective here having played Starbuck in Glen A. Larson’s 1978 original and he is plainly not digging the new breed. He makes a lot of assertions about the franchise that are plainly horseshit. Motherfuckers need to get off that shit.

In what, to be fair, is a pretty well-written piece, Benedict starts off talking about his own experience playing Starbuck, the womanising Viper pilot the suits couldn’t stand because he was just TOO REAL. Women all over the world loved Starbuck but jealous suits turned down the chance to make themselves millionaires off the back of his popularity and viciously cancelled the show. That’s very nearly unbelievable, Dirk, but if you say it so then it happened.

But it still rankles with Benedict and he takes it out on the new Galactica. “the “re-imagined” “Battlestar Galactica,” bleak, miserable, despairing, angry and confused... reflects in microcosm the complete change in the politics and moranjui.lity of today’s world, as opposed to the world of yesterday”

Yes, because 1978 was a real moral and political utopia. Get tae fuck.1

He continues: “'Un-imagining' is more accurate. To take what once was and twist it into what never was intended.”

Not only does that not seem wrong it seems like the only working justification for a remake. Are we to be forever subject to the tyranny of authorial intent? Should we give a tuppenny fuck that Larson did not intend Galactica to stare into the universe’s void as unflinchingly as it does? Hell, naw.

Apparently eager to make a virtue of missing the point, he says “a television show based on hope, spiritual faith and family is un-imagined and regurgitated as a show of despair, sexual violence and family dysfunction.”

Not even close. Original BSG is based on platitude, hokum and sentiment. Nouveau BSG is based on hope, spiritual faith and family in the face of despair, sexual violence and family dysfunction. Motherfucker, they find Earth. Cylon and human kick off homo sapiens. The slave centurions are free, free at last. Keep up.

He bemoans how the new show must “reflect the times of ambiguous morality in which we live, one would assume. A show in which the aliens (Cylons) are justified in their desire to destroy human civilization, one would assume.”

Moral relativism didn’t just arrive in 2004. Get your head around this, Dirk: simplistic morality makes for bad drama - stock characters saying and doing the obvious thing in every situation develops nothing and takes us nowhere. And cut out that “one would assume” shit. This whole piece is one big unwarranted assumption.

Unsurprisingly, he’s not crazy about the female characters in BSG. “The male characters, from Adama on down, are confused, weak and wracked with indecision, while the female characters are decisive, bold, angry as hell”.

This is balls on so many different levels. In what galaxy is Adama weak? Is this the same Adama who survived the Holocaust, assassination attempts, knocked lumps out of Chief Tyrol, threw the love of his life in the brig, ordered a nuclear strike on The Temple of Five? And while Galactica does have strong female characters they are as prone to vulnerability, fuck-ups and despair as the rest. How can characters as memorable as Kara Thrace, Laura Roslin and Caprica 6 be a bad thing? The suspicion that Benedict likes his female characters barefoot and pregnant is not easily shifted.

Now he really loses the plot. “The best minds in the world of un-imagination doubled their intake of Double Soy Lattes as they gathered in their smoke-free offices”

This is one of those bad observational comedy one-liners you see from time to time lifted from a half remembered stand up routine 15 years previous, popular among people who think that the middle classes give their kids names like Jocasta; people who will still be using the word chav five decades after it ceases to be relevant. Reimagining the team behind Battlestar Galactica as soulless Hollywood operators is just pathetic but it’s where we get to the heart of his argument.

“The creative artists have lost and the Suits have won. Suits. Administrators. Technocrats. Metro-sexual money-men (and women), who create ever more efficient formulas to guarantee profit margins.”

I have to give him credit here. It takes some balls to frame the antiseptic Star Wars bandwagon jumping Waltons-in-space potboiler Battlestar Galactica 1978 as the wild-eyed outsider labour of love of the creative artist and the dark, brilliant, twisted Battlestar Galactica 2004 as the brainchild of the money men. But still, fuck him for coming out with this despicable lie.

Developing the idiocy further, he says “Harvard Business School Technocrats run Hollywood and what Technocrats know is what must be removed from all business is Risk.”

Please. Battlestar Galactica is about nothing but risk. It makes the audience work like hell for every ounce of understanding they gain. Alienating the audience is in its DNA; its very obtuseness defines it. One actress playing six different characters; extended theological debate between machines; good Boomer, bad Boomer; Human Anders, Cylon Anders, hybrid Anders; human suicide bombers post-9/11. You want to talk about risk, motherfucker? This is the Russian roulette of remakes.

The whole thing is a shitty attempt to downgrade a great and brave work of art. “Health and safety zealots ban original BSG” is the article he really wants to be writing. The politically correct brigade have neutralised Christmas, renamed black pudding and ruined the beloved and lauded Battlestar Galactica.

Give me a break. Original BSG didn’t get cancelled after one season because it was too edgy for the suits. It got cancelled after one season because nobody cared about it. People couldn’t even be bothered to hate it. That is its legacy. The only way reimagined BSG could work is to make it as different from the original as possible. The only good things about the original - the story templates and character archetypes taken from the Bible - are the only things that remained.

It seems to irk Dirk that the show was superseded by such a massively superior piece of work, particularly when it took all the risks that the original didn’t in the name of artistic integrity. He’s mad that the world has passed him by, mad that Shilpa didn’t fuck him, mad that Katee Sackhoff’s Starbuck has bigger balls than his. He’s fooling no one with this nonsense and just looks a graceless chump.

Don’t fall for any of this revisionist cant - original Galactica sucked balls, was rightly culled before it could inflict any more damage on our culture and everyone involved with it should be eternally grateful to be even loosely associated with the magnificent second coming that Ronald D. Moore brought into being. Dirk Benedict can fuck right off.

Watch, recognize and laud the new improved BSG. Better in every conceivable way than the original.

1There is of course the joke about 1978 being a great year for Glasgow Rangers. - two popes died and Danny McGrain broke his leg.

FlashForward midseason report

OK, time out, FlashForward. You really don’t know where you’re going with this do you? Eight episodes in and I still don’t care about any of your characters. 20 million people have died and I cared more when FaceLift misplaced her nail varnish on Lost. FlashForward fan boys clog the Internet forums wondering “how will they square development x with development y?” I’ll tell you how - they’ll cheat. Because while everyone in the world is either trying to avoid their FlashForward or bring it forth the writers of the show are just relaxing in Lame-Oh Land just spinning the yarn in any direction they feel like.

So yes, some people go to any lengths to avoid their future. Of course Olivia doesn’t want to end up sexing sexy Lloyd Simcoe, so when the bra and panties she wears in her future flash love nest with Lloyd arrive as a gift from husband Mike she takes the only sensible option: she throws them in the bin. For good and all she has solved the free will debate by destroying her future knickers. I don’t see how an identical twinset can end up on her sometime in the next six months - it’s not like they’re mass manufactured or anything.

Also wresting control of the future back is FBI agent Al Gough who took a swandive off the FBI building rather than realise his future: causing the death of a woman he doesn’t yet know called Celia. Gough’s suicide causes big waves in the Already Ghosts community, those unfortunate humanoids who did not receive a FlashForward (the assumption being that they don’t live to see the next six months). These nihilist miserablists hang out at underground Blue Hand clubs where they wear black, play Russian roulette, listen to industrial metal and get their perv on. Welcome to GothForward.

I’m pretty certain none of this amounts to much. FlashForward badly wants to be Lost and to this end they employ the show’s most annoying actor Dominic Monaghan playing Simon, a hugely unconvincing science bastard involved in The Event experiment with Lloyd Simcoe that caused all the forward flashing (and the 20 million dead). Lloyd is having conscience pangs at having killed more men than malaria and wants to go public with what they did but Simon is all “yeh, woteva”.

Then, for no reason I or anyone else can fathom, Simon says he’ll agree to go public if Lloyd beats him at poker. “You want to wager the fate of millions of people on the outcome of a *poker* game?” asks Lloyd. Did I stutter, motherfucker? Lloyd wins by cheating just like the show does.

And it’s because the show is filled with crappy, haphazard, this’ll-do writing like this that I know they won’t deliver over the course of a season. Mike and his FBI buddies kill the guy with the star tattoos on his arm from Mike’s FlashForward. BUT WAIT. In the big end of show reveal there are other dudes with star tattoos ON THEIR ARMS. It’s almost like a star tattoo isn’t like dental records or DNA after all. Talk about phoning a script in. Future knickers and star tattoos are their big continuity issues.

I guarantee you the finale will be a confectionery of fudges, a holding cell of cheats and a haunted house of deux ex machinas. No good will come of it.

The verdict on FlashForward midseason report: Already strongly making the case for its own extinction.

Marks out of 10: 5

Paradox

Yes, because we need another GashForward. I don’t know if BBC and ABC held hands 18 months ago and vowed to make a dual assault on our senses with clairvoyant detective horseshit but just a couple of months after FlashBoreward premiered we witness the birth of Paradox, BBC’s “high-octane, investigative drama” starring Mel from Eastenders as Detective Inspector Rebecca Flint, a woman on a mission to do the stupid thing in a series of challenging stop-the-future-before-it-happens situations. This? My riveted face.

Nobody knows (or cares) why but astrophysicist Dr Christian King (Emun Elliott) receives images from the future on his computer thing that come FROM SPACE. And in keeping with the rest of the so-called “news” we see these days it’s never good. Take the opening salvo: a dead girl, a frisbee, a wrecked train, a shattered mobile phone - it’s like an exploded Argos catalogue. What can it all mean?

Dr Space is being all Scottish and enigmatic and teases Rebecca and her bozo colleagues DS Ben Holt (Mark Bonnar) and DC Callum Gada (Chiké Okonkwo) with what might be occurring the noo. This makes no sense at all. Why wouldn’t you just tell them “look I don’t know what’s going on either - kind of weird though. Makes you think doesn’t it?” Instead, shit for brains starts hinting that he may be a terrorist or a Time Lord. Nice work, smart arse.

We all know that in real life the moment he even mentioned his future bomb photos they’d have a cloth over his face and have him waterboarded into oblivion. So there’d be none of that Sphinxy riddle-me-this shit once he started sicking up his own lungs.

Once the biographical detail in the images check out, the police start to believe that they really have glimpsed a future disaster - much like I did when I saw the previews. They deduce that there’s going to be an oil tanker colliding with a train on a bridge - they even know which train but they don’t employ the emergency anti-terrorist powers we have in this country that allow them to stop and search GOD to, say, stop the train from travelling. No, they just talk to a man on the train on the phone. That’ll do the trick.

Oh this is such a lot of nonsense. Horrible dialogue, gaping plot holes and annoying characters - the shitbird trifecta. Everything is on the nose, nothing is left to your imagination, people say exactly what they are thinking in every situation. Tamzin Outhwaite is the same as she is in everything else, adequately hacking her way through a flailing script. It is difficult to avoid parallels with its recent American forebear and Paradox does feel like FlashForward on dialysis. It shares many of that show’s vices but expresses them in a skanky low-budget manner. Both shows are so implausibly pleased with themselves that their characters have seen the future.

Well, I’ve seen the future. This gets cancelled.

The verdict on Paradox: No future for you.

Marks out of 10: 4

Doctor Who Series 5 premiere

We’re always telling children not to walk off with strange men yet Doctor Who hightails in with his schizoid time goon routine, offers his hands to a nine-year-old Scottish girl and off they wonder to her bedroom to see some puppies. He’s, like, a thousand years old but that doesn’t matter to Amelia Pond, oddball infant Jock with a “crack” in her “wall” (that’ll be a tear in the very fabric of space-time, my guess). And as strange men go the man who steps out of the crash landed police box in her garden is one of the stranger ones. Suffering from post-regeneration traumatic syndrome, he’s twitching, babbling and jerking like Judy Finnigan in a hairshirt. He flirts with Amelia for a while before leaping into the Tardis and telling her he’ll be back in five. Turns out, he’s back in 12. Years. And he calls himself a timelord?

Amelia Pond is now Amy Pieond (Karen Gillan), sexy flame haired kissogram with a fiery yet vulnerable heart in La Senza police uniform. Together, they are menaced by a shit monster that looks like the Curious Alien from This Morning with Richard Not Judy. Curious Alien’s alien captors decide to destroy planet Earth for harbouring a multi dimensional criminal. Doctor Poo starts quoting intergalactic bylaws and all of a sudden we’re in Hitchhiker’s Guide.

As the doctor gurns, leaps and gambols, Amy spends most of her time pulling her microskirt down and looking surprised. She’ll catch some flak for being sexually attractive but her ginger ostrich chasing around in hen night fancy dress shtick was the only entertaining thing about this opener. Take out the da-daa-da-da-da-daa-daa incidental music and you’re left with a seriously dull plot, depressingly derivative baddies and a palpable phone-this-in-they’ll-give-us-rave-reviews-anyway attitude that infects everything. It’s all quirk and no substance.

How anyone thinks Matt Smith is some kind of fresh take on the Doctor is beyond my ken. There is not a mannerism, character point or idiosyncrasy that hasn’t been done by Tennant or Ecclestone. It’s not like he does it particularly badly. Few actors do a bad Doctor Who because it’s a showy role requiring little nuance or range, just a willingness to show off. How hard is it a find an actor who likes to do that?

Babble about the breathless pace all you like, Doctor Who stopped being good television some time ago and is now sci-fi by numbers hackwork. There is no subversion, no ingenuity and the deux ex machina employed to defeat the CGI Eyeball of Doom clunked like the Lee “Scratch” Perry dub remix of a chain being dropped down a 500 foot toilet in the centre of the Grand Canyon.

Sparky overwritten dialogue that advances neither character nor story abounds. This was smoke and mirrors to deflect attention away from a dying leader. Brezhnev is comatose. And Doctor Who is done. Remember where you were when you first heard it. Aerial Telly called it.

Welcome return? Get the fuck out of here.

The verdict on Doctor Who Series 5 premiere: Doctor Poo.

Marks out of 10: 5

Doctor Who - Vincent and The Doctor

“This world was never made for one as beautiful as you” Don MacLean - Vincent

“There’s a stake in your fat black heart and the villagers never liked you,” Sylvia Plath - Daddy

“The sky is falling!” Chicken Licken

The worst thing about time travel drama is when it turns into historical starfucking - slutting around the famous dead and giving them exactly what’s coming to them (closure, humiliation, heads up on their assassination). On Saturday, not for the first time in its run, Doctor Who turned into Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure as they went back to the summer of 1890 to screw with the destitute and mentally ill Vincent van Gogh. It was scripted by Richard Curtis and as such was technically astute, shamelessly manipulative and saturated with life-threatening levels of mawk.

It started with Amy and Doc visiting Musee d’Orsay (trans: The Parisien Gallery of That Art) where Dr Black, (Bill Nighy, who you’ll remember stinking out the repulsively cynical Christmas cash-in Love, Actually) bombshells that this Van Gogh could paint a bit. But they’re all ‘whatevs’ because the Doctor has noticed that there’s an evil face in the window of Van Gogh’s painting of a Church. So he and his redhead escort hightail it to the Auvers-sur-Oise countryside of June 1890. The fun, she has just begun.

They hook up with Vincent in a cafe. This Van Gogh is Scottish - a people thought to possess the appropriate level of soulful angry depression necessary for any depiction of futile tormented genius. Curtis probably requested John Hannah but he was too busy purging himself of endless Four Weddings reruns of him reading Auden at the funeral and being THAT NAUSEY CUNT from Sliding Doors by cathartically shouting “BY ACHILLES RINGPIECE!” and the like in Spartacus every week.

Vincent van Jock wants to put his van Cock in Amy not, as you may imagine, because she wears tiny, tiny skirts and is stunningly beautiful but because of a deep spiritual affinity they share. He tells Flamy that he sees her sadness - the unspoken connection between depressed gingers is palpable. With that terracotta scarf, citric orangey hair and peppermint pale skin Amy would be a good subject for a Van Gogh masterpiece if only they had the time.

But that’s not the issue at hand. Remember evil window face in the painting? It’s a giant invisible birdlike lizard called the Krafayis only van Jock can see. Part-chicken, part-dinosaur it’s tearing up the villagers and they are naturally blaming van Jock as it is a functional necessity of the script because said script will be making a terrible, moronic and emotionally incontinent parallel between chickenosaurus rex and van Jock a little later on.

When the time comes to defeat the chicken lizard it’s through a combination of the Doctor realising it’s blind, a sonic rearview mirror and stabbing it through the tits with an easel. As the chicken expires, the Doctor translates its dying words. It’s “afraid”. Van Jock quickly realises that chickenosaurus is just like the frightened villagers who call him a wanker for never paying for his drinks and the children who throw stones at him. OK. There’s your terrible, moronic and emotionally incontinent parallel. Blind, misunderstood and a clumsy representation of human isolation and mental illness? Oh Richard, you spoil us.

But he’s not done yet - far from it. Curtis has them drag Van Jock into the Tardis, back to 2010 and to Musée d’Orsay to show him exactly how celebrated he is in 2010 (to the power chords of Athlete! “La tristesse durera toujours” indeed.) Vincent’s eyes fill with tears. Not enough slush? Here comes more.

Doctor makes Bill Nighy explain just how great Van Gogh is as Van Jock eavesdrops and masturbates furiously over Amy’s spindly legs. Here comes the money shot. “Not only the greatest artist” says Bill “But ONE OF THE GREATEST MEN who ever lived”. And he says it right as Vincent spaffs over Amy’s tights. She is overcome. Aren’t we all?

Curtis never uses a pipette where he can use a trowel. I’d like to set the record straight. Vincent van Gogh never travelled forward in time to see his genius realised. He sat around the final few months of his life drinking, wanking over prostitutes, self-harming and sleeping in hollow logs before dying like a turd at his own hand, stinking of failure and cat’s piss. I can handle that truth. Can you?

Is this where Doctor Who goes now? Will he travel through cultural history preventing calamity? Who wouldn’t want to do that? I’d go back in time and save Fiona Apple from being raped; maybe make sure Nancy Spungen never meets that no-talent shit John Simon Ritchie; see to it Ocean Colour Scene never form. But writing a show about it? Not so much. The kind of people who were impressed by this are the same people who wet themselves when Shannon and Sayid met up and made out in Lost’s finale. This is Van Gogh fan-fic deftly and intelligently written by possibly the most cynical screenwriter we’ve ever produced.

Richturd Curtis is a writer out of control. There is nothing he won’t cheapen with sentiment - a pathological need exists within him to chocolate box everything. He is on a mission to debase every authentic emotion ever felt by a human. He needs reining in.

And at no point does Van Gogh put his cock in Amy. That is his tragedy. Watching this is ours alone.

The verdict on Doctor Who - Vincent and The Doctor: Overbearing yet underwhelming.

Marks out of 10: 5

...and finally

“Ah fuck it - the cunt bit me” - a Steve Irwin tribute

It was an unfitting end for a man who had wrestled crocodiles and eyeballed the world’s most venomous snakes. It seemed somehow tawdry, out of place. When the news came it felt like a barb through the heart. TV crocodile man Steve Irwin tragically died on Monday after an attack from a stingray, a venomous yet placid sea creature.

Famous for his catchphrase “crikey” and saying things like “he’s getting awfully cranky” at a venom spitting snake, Irwin brought edge-of-the-seat wildlife baiting to the masses with his unique eye-popping presenting style. A committed conservationist, he founded several conservation projects putting money where his sizable mouth was and bought habitat to save it from developers.

It is a measure of how deeply he was loved that the public forgave him for his horribly misjudged feeding-crocodiles-with-his-baby incident. He seemed unable to understand the public outcry but gave private assurances that he would never pull a stunt like that again.

His death has been greeted with unparalleled levels of grief in Australia. It’s hard to overestimate how fully he expressed something deep within the Australian psyche. A nation descended from convicts and screws, they’ve made a virtue of no-nonsense from the gut straight-talking and an unyielding can-do attitude that he personified. And yet, a more sophisticated metropolitan Australian audience groaned every time this walking caricature came on the screen. Rather like the ambivalent attitude we in England have towards Hugh Grant’s good-natured foppishness, Irwin was a blessing and curse for the perception of Australians abroad.

Irwin wore khaki shorts so tight even Stuart Pearce himself would wince. He bounded, he pranced and shamelessly mugged to the camera. Many, including Germaine Greer, took his death as an opportunity to sneer at his legacy. But David Bellamy described him as “one of the great showmen and conservationists” and wept as he heard the news. He is survived by his hot wife Terri who is back on the market again so it’s not all bad news.

In an industry where bland careerist scum are as plentiful as fruit on the vine it was refreshing to see someone so instantly recognisable, committed and passionate about something other than getting their face on the box.

Aerial Telly salutes The Steve Irwin. He took incredible risks with pissed off snakes and crocodiles. He took the wildlife show into new territory. He bravely sported eye-wateringly tight shorts. We will miss you Steve, you stupid bastard.

The verdict on The Steve Irwin: An authentic TV original. R.I.P.

Marks out of 10: 8

To the reader

Thanks so much for reading Television Can Blow Me. If you like it, please take time to leave a review on Amazon. Your support is always appreciated.

The sequel, Television Can Blow Me II: “This time it's Persil”, is currently in production and features 100% original never-seen-before material. Sources indicate it's going to be large.

Aerial Telly forever. Hopeless heathen groupie media scum never.