TV Preview, Britain's Got Talent: Surely television can do better on a Saturday night?

It seems like only yesterday that I decided to studiously ignore the new series of Britain’s Got Talent and, goodness me how time flies. Tomorrow, I’ll also be able to ignore the grand final of the 2018 series and I thus look forward to not giving a blind bit of notice to whoever wins. I know, millions will tune in, but still.

Then again, I did see a tweet that ran as follows: “Half woman, half equine goddess! @uutai_o is ready for the #BGT”. I’m sure you’re as intrigued at this as I confess I was, and it turns out that Olena Uutai is a “virtuoso on the “jaw harp” and that she’s hoping we’ll vote for her. Well, that’s good enough for me so she will indeed get my ballot even without hearing her.

As you’d expect, Simon Cowell, David Walliams, Dec and some others will be camping up the campest thing since the Eurovision final. And they say variety died in the 1960s.

open image in gallery

Surely we can do better for a Saturday night? What I’d really like to see is a series called “Britain’s Got No Talent” in which truly woeful acts attempt to justify their existence and break into the big time on the sole criteria and explicit understanding that they do so on the basis that they are “so bad they’re good”. A lifetime of E-list celebrity status, decent appearance fees and panel shows awaits them and their self-administered comedy colonoscopy/talking rat/botched knife throwing/Peter Sutcliffe impressions/all of the foregoing. I’d like to be a judge too, please. You’d watch though, wouldn’t you?

Anyway, Sunday nights have been a bit more entertaining, with A Very English Scandal, the BBC’s gem of a dramatisation of the Thorpe affair that reaches this week reaches of finale of its own, complete with judges and bizarre stories. Oddly, at the time if not in this excellent series, the final Old Bailey court case – of a Liberal Party leader arraigned on charges of incitement and conspiracy to murder, no less – was a bit of an anticlimax as so much had already come out and events were overshadowed by the arrival of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister.

Anyway, you see that 1979, if you missed it, was quite an eventful year. Plaudits to Hugh Grant, quite superb as Jeremy Thorpe, and I’d have thought they might as well engrave his Bafta here and now. Ben Whishaw, Michele Dotrice, Monica Dolan, Patricia Hodge and Alex Jennings, among others, are also just brilliant. Brilliant bunnies! (You’ll have to watch it to catch the reference, if it’s lost on you).

By the way, and actually just as watchable, BBC4 is squeezing out a 1979/80 edition of Panorama that the BBC planned to show post-trial, but eventually decided not to. Tom Mangold, for whom the phrase “veteran reporter” was surely coined, is persuasive on the existence of something amounting to an establishment cover-up or conspiracy at the time, and offers intriguing new evidence about that, including an interview with the remarkable Peter Bessell, Thorpe’s fellow MP and chum turned bankrupt nemesis. An ideal accompaniment to the drama series

Talking of camp, we also have The Crystal Maze Celebrity Special on Friday night, whereby Richard Ayoade – his considerable talents I think wasted here – encourages the following to lark around, probably for charity. See how many names you can’t recognise: Alfie Deyes; Jorgie Porter; Greg Rutherford; Kelly Holmes and Big Narstie.

open image in gallery

The special is not, I’d say, exactly fulfilling Channel’s 4’s remit to be innovative and experimental, and to appeal to the tastes and interests “not generally catered for” by ITV. Which brings me to the triumph of [ITV public service broadcasting that is Love Island, which I have been tempted to examine as an artefact of contemporary Britain.

My prejudice is that it’s about sex and the ritual humiliation of some gullible/pitiful kids who believe that the way to make a living in this country isn’t to gain a qualification or train for a trade or profession, nor even to start their own business, not even a life of crime, but to simulate coitus under a duvet on ITV2 four nights a week: A Britain that shags for all, as Theresa May might say, though I can’t imagine her and Philip settling down to it.

As I say, that is my prejudice, and I stand ready to be reassured by the reality of Love Island, spread, as it will be, over an arduous (for all concerned) eight weeks. Body fascism, here we come.

Last, and in fairness to Channel 4, I can recommend two fine series beginning on Tuesday evening. Bride and Prejudice explores the traumatic world of real-life would-be spouses fighting the fears, prejudices, hostility and incomprehension of friends and family as the approach their big days. And Ackley Bridge is firmly set in the world of fiction, a very grown-up multicultural northern version of Grange Hill, but is the most realistic kind of mini-soap series we’ve seen for some considerable time. A bright future awaits.

Britain’s Got Talent (ITV, Sunday 7.30pm); The Crystal Maze Celebrity Special (Channel 4, Friday 9pm); Bride and Prejudice (Channel 4, Tuesday 9pm); A Very English Scandal (BBC1, Sunday 9pm); The Jeremy Thorpe Scandal (BBC4, Sunday 10pm); Love Island (ITV2, from Monday 9pm); Ackley Bridge (Channel 4, Tuesday 8pm)