Feeds
The “radical” new world includes interactivity. Haven't we been interacting with BBC shows forever? All the shows are available online though. Big deal. Never heard of iPlayer?
Have the schedules been radically altered? Well not so as you'd notice. Pretty much the same uninspiring stuff as before only they have ploughed loads of their budget into wastes of screen time Phoo Action - a post watershed action spoof with a mental age of seven – and Lily Allen and Friends.
This chatshow is actually so bad that it may well have destroyed its hapless hostess's reputation overnight. Fortunately for Lily, virtually no one was watching. Well not on the telly anyway. Perhaps loads of Lily devotees were tuning in on MySpace and despairing as their idol made a total tit of herself.
I can understand the feelings of disappointment. I can remember memories of my misspent youth being shattered when High Priestess of Punk Toyah Wilcox turned up in advert for roll-on deodorant. “C'mon girls, roll on the Mum.” For today's yoofs, this must have been just as devastating.
When the highlight of the show is footage of a bear masturbating then you know you've got problems. It was sort of appropriate though. You could sum up the whole show with a four letter word being with “W”.
The biggest problem with relaunch is the distracting purple DOG, possibly the most obtrusive example of this dodgy art form since the demise of Sky's The Comedy Channel in the early nineties.
Now as I'm not what you'd call one of the channel's most regular viewers, this shouldn't have bothered me but it did, because the channel had a first look ep of Torchwood and so annoying was the big purple logo that I really did consider waiting a week before watching the show DOG free on BBC Two.
Watching a brace of episodes seemed like a daunting prospect but the show really has hit its stride now and what we got were two golden nuggets.
Firstly we had a rather neat tale of a creature that survived by messing with the memories of others. This was a great concept on which to base an episode, giving all the actors a decent innings – even the guy who plays Rhys – and allowing them slightly more interesting dialogue than “rift activity” to spout.
A lot of the action was taken with Captain Jack flashbacks but they managed to not completely blow his air of mystery, although for me he remains the least interesting of the team, or least he did until Martha turned up.
Yes, the next instalment was the long-awaited reappearance of Doctor Jones and it wasn't long before she was fulfilling the archetypal companion role of damsel in distress. Not a problem though because this was another belting episode, complete with Jim Robinson out of Neighbours as the mad scientist exploiting alien lifeforms.
Fair play, there were moments that could have come straight out of Primeval but this was a superb runaround, with a beautifully set up denouement and a real sting in its tale. The sort of telly you pay your licence fee for.
