TV Preview: Imagine... Andrew Lloyd Webber: Memories (BBC1, Monday 10.45pm): Maestro gets the Yentob treatment
This week on the magic rectangle... a big beast of musical theatre and some big beasts of the animal kingdom
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Your support makes all the difference.“It must be a face – it’s got ears” is one of the more unkind comments I’ve heard about Andrew Lloyd Webber. Leaving aside his looks (not his fault) and his politics (which are – he threatened to leave the country of that crazed Bolshevik ony Blair got elected back in 1997), he’s a perfectly decent musician with some catchy tunes and musicals to his double-barrelled name. Vast wealth too, of course. Time, then, for the Yentob treatment, and the artsy pair entering themselves, and you, in Imagine… Andrew Lloyd Webber: Memories. Maybe he’ll tell us where he’ll be heading once Corbyn gets in.
Talking of pug ugly, Caroline Quentin goes in search of The World’s Ugliest Pets for ITV. Lloyd Webber’s got nothing on this lot, and was good to see the child-frightening Sam, again, an ugly old dog for sure which defies description. Quentin also comes face to hairless face with a bald baby rat someone actually loves, a collection of slightly malformed hairless Chinese crested dogs (which are generally the ugliest breed), and hairless sphinx cats (as featured in the Austin powers films with Dr Evil). You see a pattern here, don’t you? Entertaining, and surprisingly thoughtful about the nature of beauty.
To cleanse your palate with some more conventionally good looking creatures there’s Britain’s Polar Bear Cub on Channel 4, and Big Cats about the House, featuring amiable conservationist Giles Clark and a super-handsome baby black panther. I mean really cute.
I can’t really decide if the sight of Michael Portillo in Indian national costume is a delightful multicultural gesture or a rather patronising cringeworthy gesture. Given the context of his latest adventure on the choo choos, Great Indian Train Journeys, meshing the history of the British Raj into his encounters with the contemporary landscape, it might be said to veer into that territory. Then again, all the Punjabis he meets in this first instalment are so charming, and the tailors so pleased with their efforts, that it makes everyone, including the viewer; feel all warm and lovely. Given the often brutal and almost entirely exploitative history of British imperial rule, including the 1919 massacre of innocent civilians by British troops at Amritsar, and the chaos and tragedies of partition in 1947, it is a small wonder that any Briton is welcome in today’s free and democratic republic.
This is in fact the best of the Portillo travelogues, with an excellent balance of storytelling, gawping at scenery and reflection. Plus Portillo outdoes himself in his choice of flamboyant outfits. Just check out that Nehru jacket.
It’s Sport Relief week on the BBC, and the highlight, or at least the show that most of us will relate to, for obvious reasons, wheezes onto our screens on Sunday night – Famously Unfit for Sport Relief. The telly tubbies comprise fashion journalist Susannah Constantine, EastEnders actor Tameka Empson, and very funny comedian Miles Jupp. Inspirational. If you’ve got nothing better to do for the whole of Friday night then BBC1 is block booked for the charity telethon from 7pm to 2am.
Two excellent products of the comedy mockumentary boom continue their runs. This Country, which combines an iPlayer debut and a BBC1 repeat, is the funniest thing to ever come out of the Cotswolds, and this week sees the usually tolerant and warm Vicar lose his composure. Meanwhile, Soft Border Patrol (BBC Northern Ireland and iPlayer) is the only amusing thing to emerge from Brexit. Set in the near future, it’s a satirical account of the elusive “soft border” across the island of Ireland, policed by an explicitly “soft” non-aggressive force set up jointly by Dublin, Brussels, Stormont and London. Even the jokes about observation towers and razor wire work, it’s that good. Necessary as a sense of humour is at such moments, it’s also a time for serious consideration of the horrors of the past, and if you’re too young to remember the Troubles and can’t understand what the fuss is about a few cameras on the roads, then you ought to catch The Funeral Murders, which retells the story of how a loyalist paramilitary named Michael Stone launched an attack at an IRA funeral cemetery, killing three and injuring 60 more. It was an unusually savage episode, but the kind of thing that people became quite inured to before the Good Friday Agreement put an end to all that. Well, we thought it had, anyway.
Sir Trevor McDonald proves, once again, that he’s still got it in his Thursday night tribute to Martin Luther King, murdered fifty years ago. “It” being real passion: “Were he alive today, he would probably be on the march again. This time against inequality and injustice, the twin evils that still scar millions of black American lives” is Sir Trevor’s judgement and, sad to say, few would dispute it.
Imagine... Andrew Lloyd Webber: Memories (BBC1, Monday 10.45pm); The World's Ugliest Pets (ITV, Tuesday 8pm); Britain's Polar Bear Cub (Channel 4, Sunday 7pm); Big Cats about the House (BBC2, Thursday 8pm); Great Indian Train Journeys (BBC2, Tuesday 8pm); Famously Unfit for Sport Relief (BBC2, Sunday 9pm); This Country (BBC1, Tuesday 10.45pm/BBC iPlayer); Soft Border Patrol (BBC Northern Ireland, Friday 10.35pm/BBC iPlayer); The Funeral Murders (BBC2, Monday 9pm); Martin Luther King by Trevor McDonald (ITV, Thursday 9pm)
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