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6am - 12
12 - 6pm
6pm - 6am
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Powerhouse
at midday is a live ITN production anchored by Joanna Foster, the chairwoman
of the National Work Forum. "Welcome to Westminster" she says,
as though this programme is directly at the heart of the Commons.
Foster appears uncomfortable and never
able to hide the artifice of presentation; there is a curious mix in her
narrative, too - the even-handed slightly bland mode of address familiar
to TV presenting is offset by some quite personal partisan commentary,
such as "Father-to-be Tony Blair urges business to adopt more family
friendly policies - something for which I've long campaigned." A
brief interview with Martin Bell about possible compensation for Japanese
prisoners of war reveals Foster unable to keep the mechanics of TV hidden
when she puts a question with the tag "Just a very brief answer please,
Martin." She is similarly ill at ease interviewing Anne McElvoy and
Annella Johnson in an item about sexual equality in politics. There is
a glorious moment at the end of the programme as Foster patently expects
a VT insert which fails to arrive, and looks helplessly off camera for
a couple of seconds.
Why Weight?,
also live, is odious self-improvement nonsense prefixed with a Barry Bethall-esque
endorsement - "Hello! Mandy from Suffolk says she's amazed our food
and fitness plan has helped her lose 11 pounds - it's so simple she didn't
believe it would work! Can you believe that?!" Carole Malone is "the
presenter who's tried every diet in the book" and between herself
and fitness expert (a vague, nebulous title) Matt Roberts and chef James
Martin we are promised "a recipe for changing the way you think about
food and keeping fit and healthy forever!" But it's tyrannical rubbish,
enforcing a sense of guilt upon overweight women who are brought onto
the programme and made to account for everything they've eaten in the
previous week. It's Diana Dors on TV-am all over again. Why watch?
Lifestyle programming
continues with the forgettable Home Sweet Home, making the preceding
hour probably the most dismal slot on C4 today. "Our movie matinee"
is from 1955, starring Richard Widmark, Lauren Bacall and Lillian Gish.
The Cobweb is an overblown psychological drama concerned with the
choosing of new drapes for a hospital library (honestly!). The dialogue
is awfully rank and thus terribly quotable: "Why do flowers have
to be for anything? Do they not have colour and form?"
We're back
on a lifestyle tip with Collector's Lot USA.
Presenter Debbie Thrower presides over
this light look at the world of collectors, including a report from David
Stafford in Hollywood who is meeting a hoarder of vintage movie and TV
memorabilia. Thrower interviews a collector of US number plates followed
by an Elvis Presley fan who proudly displays a written reply from Colonel
Parker, in response to a letter the enthusiast sent to his home address.
Parker says: 1. Do not give out his address to anyone, and 2. Never write
to him again. Thrower responds: "So it makes it a more personal letter
to you." "Yes." says fan. "It's a more personal letter
and not just a standard reply." Laura Beaumont files quite a dignified
little report on a collection of slavery artefacts. But why Collector's
Lot USA? There seems to be no rationale for creating a programme around
American detritus, but here it is. And every weekday too.
Fifteen to One
and Countdown give us an hour of quizzes. The former is based around
a format apparently devised by a British Telecom engineer and affords
host William G Stewart the opportunity for a sort of threatening gravitas.
Ironic really, when one remembers that Stewart himself was behind many
other quiz shows of a very different kind - witness The Price is Right.
As the contestants are whittled away down to the One, Stewart seems to
advance a step at each casualty. This is a tense, dignified programme.
Countdown
is light by contrast, but perhaps the more successful. Surely everyone
harbours some fondness for this silly words and numbers game, presided
over by that stoutly middle-class and middle-aged buffer Richard Whiteley.
What was contemporary reaction to Countdown back in November '82
when Whiteley informed us that a countdown to a new channel had ended,
but The Countdown had just begun? That such a staid, inconsequential parlour
game should launch the new Channel 4 ... Today's guest boffin is Stephen
Fry who happily engages in the spirit of things, enduring Whiteley's puns
with a requisite groan and providing some brain-fodder as we head for
the commercials. All the elements are present and correct, down to Alan
Hawkshaw's rightly celebrated theme, shuffling and scratching and not
altogether dissimilar to his even more celebrated "Chicken Man"
(the original theme to Grange Hill). Long may The Countdown continue.
The opening credits
for Ricki Lake seem to go to great lengths to portray the erstwhile
host as a sort of every (wo)man figure. Here's Ricki smiling! Here's Ricki
roller-skating! Here's Ricki picnicking! Bouncing onto the set ("Go
Ricki!") she quickly lays in the plot: "These two women are
both into the same man behind bars." We are introduced, inevitably,
to a parade of "ordinary" people, one of whom claims, "I
don't give him no booty!" and is met with rapturous applause and
howling from the studio audience. Ricki's role is to draw out the narrative
from the situation, so much so that half way through the proceedings a
doorbell sound effect rings out. "I wonder who that can be?"
asks Ricki stagily. Of course it's yet another guest and yet another component
to our unfolding story. Ricki does not make any pretence of the application
of therapy, wrapping the whole thing up with a curt bon mot - "And
those who doubt their men in jail remember it wasn't their honesty that
got them there in the first place." In the final analyses the best
that could be said for Ricki Lake is that it's less-offensive then
its brethren. Go Ricki!
"On Pet Rescue
today, Hedgehog Rescue have two new patients and Sherman needs a home".
Tris Payne hosts this tear-jerking twin of Animal Hospital. We
follow the Leicester Hedgehog Rescue as they attempt to nurse back to
health two injured 'hogs, Bill and Ben. It's debatable whether this is
in good taste, and whilst we make a diversion to a Donkey Sanctuary the
ever present Simon May type incidental music reminds us that Pet Rescue
is all about pathos. We return to the hedgehogs to find a twist in the
tail. Ben (who was apparently the healthier of the two) dies and Bill
lives. Blinking back the tears we cannot help but feel a little manipulated;
this item blatantly staged to provoke the maximum amount of emotion in
the viewer. And so from death to an RSPCA officer who sings at night in
a club act called Xanadu (Peter Kay, are you getting all this down?) Pet
Rescue elicits a wash of easy emotion today, but the kettle is on
before the credits roll.
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