Televison: Today's pick
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Your support makes all the difference.Robot Wars (6.25pm BBC2) Gladiators meets DIY in this surprisingly enjoyable new series, inspired by a format that apparently does good business in the States. Teams of enthusiasts build their own remote-controlled robots (wheelchair motors seem to be the favourite means of propulsion) and then pit them against in-house robots and each other. Weapons include adapted chainsaws, angle-grinders and - most effective of all in this first programme - a pneumatic "tongue" which flips opponents onto their backs. Master of ceremonies is Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson at his most camp. He's assisted by Robot Wars's answer to Ulrika Jonsson - Philippa Forrester - and, best of all, Channel 5's excitable football commentator Jonathan Pearce, who sends his trade up something rotten. Cult material, but it needs better scheduling.
Is It Bill Bailey? (11.15pm BBC2) Bill Bailey acknowledges the past-its- sell-by-date of his 1995 Time Out award for comedy by introducing himself as "Stars in Your Eyes 1982... Meat Loaf... regional winner". Actually, he looks more like a roadie at a Status Quo concert, and his speciality is mucking around with TV theme music on the synthesiser. Far better than he sounds, which is a kind of Jasper Carrott for the late 1990s.
THe film
The Way We Were (11.15pm BBC1) The way Americans were, allegedly, between the 1930s and 1950s, as bland, blond WASP writer Robert Redford is politicised by Jewish radical Barbra Steisand (sporting a weird sort of blonde Afro). Thanks largely to the unlikely, but very real chemistry between Bob and Babs, this soppy and often ludicrous Sydney Pollack-directed entertainment from 1973 is also hugely enjoyable. Singalong with the hit theme song if you find yourself coming over all analytical.
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