Spectator sport

The X Factor (ITV, Saturday and Sunday) is the most popular show on television at the moment. I felt I should watch it so that you don’t have to.

It’s very loud. There is a lot of clashing and banging and whooping and whooshing. A voiceover booms at you, and the presenter shouts at everyone. The audience sounds as if it’s on something which might not trouble Professor Nutt but could cause grief to Alan Johnson. The slightest remark makes them cheer or boo irrationally.

It’s very camp and ironic. The two male judges — Simon Cowell and some...

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Near flawless

A few months ago my wife said something to me so awful and shocking I contemplated divorce. ‘I don’t want to watch any more war programmes with you,’ she said. ‘It’s like watching paint dry.’

Imagine, then, my secret joy when, right near the end of Into the Storm (BBC2, Monday), I detected beside me on the sofa the hint of a promising snuffle. It was VE Day. The King was on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, beckoning Winston Churchill to come and join him. As soon as he did, the crowd erupted with joy and gratitude. I glanced sideways...

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Pillow talk

Wonderland: The British in Bed (BBC2, Thursday) consists of long periods of boredom interrupted by moments of extreme embarrassment. The notion is to get couples — old, young, black, Sikh, gay — to sit up in bed next to each other, in nighties and jimjams, and talk about their lives as partners. Presumably, the notion is that in these relaxed circumstances, even with a camera crew at the foot of the bed, they will be inclined to tell us all.

But they don’t. For a start, they hardly talk about sex, except in the most general way. The fact...

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Crime watch

Oh. My. God. Can it really be, like, 16 years since it was 1993? I very much fear it can and the reason the thought is so bothersome is that I remember thinking, even back then, ‘Blimey, I really am getting on a bit. Can’t do pills nearly as often as I used to. The yawning grave beckons. Etc.’

This all came back to me while watching Murderland (ITV1, Monday) in which Robbie Coltrane plays someone a bit like Fitz from Cracker — only with most of the vices (drinking, chain-smoking, gambling) removed. Coltrane has denied there’s any connection, pointing...

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Ferocious fauna

Two things puzzle me about vegetarians. Whenever they come to visit us, we always provide a vegetarian dish for them. But if you go to a vegetarian’s home, no one says, ‘I know you won’t like this lentil and halloumi lasagne, so we’ve cooked you steak and chips.’ Never. As for those who don’t eat meat on moral grounds, what’s their response to those animals who eat their comrades in the struggle against oppression?

And they don’t mess around with battery farming either. Life (BBC1, Monday) had some of the most powerful images of ferocious fauna that have ever appeared...

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There will be blood

All right, I surrender. There’s just no way on earth I can deal in 600 words with all the great, or potentially great, TV that has been on lately. Emma; Alex: A Passion for Life (the sequel to that moving documentary about the brilliant Etonian musician with cystic fibrosis); Generation Kill. Truly, it has been what we classical scholars call a Weekus Mirabilis. I’m going to deal with just three offerings.

First, Criminal Justice (BBC1, all week for a whole hour each night, which is a serious commitment, n’est-ce pas?). I’ve only seen episode one and I’m torn. I sympathise...

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