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Jane’s sex problem

James Delingpole

Wednesday, 30th April 2008

Miss Austen Regrets (BBC1); The Apprentice (BBC1); Heroes (BBC2); Peep Show (Channel 4)

Those of us who still thought the show was about finding the best candidate for some 100K work experience in Sugar’s business were brutally disabused in episode four, when ‘Sir Alan’ wantonly fired the decent, likeable, efficient ex-military man Simon Smith. Smith’s main shortcoming was that he wasn’t as shifty as the bestubbled, doe-eyed Machiavel Alex, nor as cold and sharkily merciless as Claire. I wish it were otherwise because then I wouldn’t have to waste an hour watching every week.

Heroes is back for a new series (BBC2, Thursday), which I was quite prepared to enjoy as much as I do The Apprentice, till I read about creator Tim Kring’s Ratner-like apology to fans for having made it too slow. Apparently it doesn’t recover its pace till episode seven — it took the script team time to respond to the 15 per cent drop in its audience figures — and the storyline where Hiro goes back to 17th-century Japan is said to go on far too long.

Maybe I’ve got a longer attention span than the show’s US audience, but I didn’t find the first episode so bad. There are some new supercharacters — a Guatamalan brother and sister who seem to have this thing where they accidentally massacre people, a bit like the foxy blonde schizo used to in series one. And some nice little subplots, like the ex-sinister-man-with-the-horn-rimmed-glasses attempting to settle down to a new life of normality in California — which isn’t easy when you formerly ran a CIA-style agency of ruthless killers and your adopted, autoregenerative daughter can chop off her limbs and grow them back as a lizard does its tail. Suresh is still unbelievably dull, though. And the fake Irish accents done by American actors in the scene set in Cork were almost worthy of the Mancunian cockney in Frasier.

Peep Show (C4, Friday) is back for a fifth series and, not before time, viewers, critics, award panels and commissioning editors finally seem to agree that it’s the funniest, cleverest home-grown sitcom on TV. The last one ended in spectacularly low style with Jeremy (Robert Webb) jilting his fiancée at the altar and then embarrassedly relieving himself against the church wall. ‘Yes, you can talk the talk, Richard Dawkins,’ went his self-justificatory interior monologue. ‘But can you walk the walk?’