No joy without Lovejoy

I felt a bit sorry for Andy Goldstein as he attempted the task of filling Tim Lovejoy's shoes as Soccer AM made its return.

This show has always been notoriously formulaic and Goldstein was somewhat hogtied by the rigidness of the structure, making comparisons between him and Tim inevitable and he was always going to come off as second best.

What would have given him a fighting chance would have been a shake up of the format, to allow him to put his own stamp on things and let his personality shine through. Instead we get the same tired old features, some of which were wearing very thin even with Lovejoy at the helm.

The biggest problem came during the popular Soccerette feature, where they mistakenly left the catwalk feature in. The attempt to make light of Goldstein's failings in this area - including a skit with Paula Hamilton giving him lessons - was remarkably unentertaining.

There was one scene that tickled my funny bone, a skit about Goldstein's audition featuring Katie from The Apprentice. She's obviously having a ball sending up her public image.

I think there's a future for this old warhorse, but only if some effort is put into revamping it. At the moment, it just looks lazy and no longer has the charisma of its star to carry it through the dodgy moments.

Hi Summer

The weather was actually quite good last week, which was pretty good news given the dearth of orginal entertainment available on our screens. I've spent much of the week watching old stuff.

Science fiction loomed large on the movie channels with Sky showing all the Star Wars and all but one of the Trek movies ad infinitum. For those geeks worried that the set was incomplete, Film4 came to the rescue by showing the last outing of Picard and his crew.

Now I like a good special effects movie but sixteen in one week is a little bit rich for my taste and surely those who have the stomach to sit through every movie are likely to own them already on DVD?

Creakier futuristic action was to be found over on ITV4 where UFO is being given another run out. The whole thing is highly stylised, from the ghastly 21st Century "fashions", to Ed Bishop's stilted line delivery, to the eye boggling sexism of George Sewell's character who seems to leer at every scantily clad or cat suited female that catches his eye line. It's not difficult though as scantily clad females are draped everywhere. Indeed you are much more likely to see them than an unidentified flying object.

It's easy to mock but if you can get past the kitsch, there are some very interesting stories and themes addressed here and it's certainly better than its reputation would suggest. If anything would benefit from a remake, this show certainly would.

From the same somewhat dodgy era of television comes LWT's On the Buses. They made so many episodes of this that it is able to fill vast swathes of Men and Motors without them constantly airing the same few shows.

Lowbrow would be the best way to describe it, with crude gags, occasional hints of racism and bags and bags of sexism and misogyny. Our modern day sensibilities should have us recoiling in horror from this, but if you view its social attitudes as merely a reflection of a less enlightened age then it does have a certain earthy charm about it, much of it down to Reg Varney, who is very much required to carry the thing, as much of the supporting cast are merely caricatures, though nemesis Inspector Blakey is far less reliant on catchphrases than I'd remembered him.

Over on UKTV Gold, they seem to think that if David Jason or Ronnie Barker isn't in something, it's not worth scheduling. Every time I turned to the channel this week, they were showing an episode of Only Fools and Horses, though it was a bit of gamble as to which season they'd be showing, leaving me to catch the end of an early episode at one point in the evening and one of the comeback shows later on.

What was interesting about this was how much Rodney had changed from the gormless prune he was in the initial series to the world-weary one we got when the Trotters returned. The comeback shows have a bit of a tarnished reputation now, but the sight of Rodney dressed as Russell "Gladiator" Crowe is a definite high point.

Over on Paramount 2 they are well into yet another rerun of Drop the Dead Donkey, a show that had its main strength in the fact that it was highly topical and filmed just a day before transmission. As such, reruns lose much of their power, but over a decade later, this becomes all the more noticeable, especially so when watching with people who have to keep asking questions like "Who was Peter Lilley anyway?"

Despite that though the show's strong characters and genuinely funny, if somewhat farcical situations are far, far better than anything today's home-grown sitcoms have to offer.

Standing up far better to the test of time are the re-runs of Friends which are virtually impossible to miss if you ever go anywhere near E4. I seem to recall a certain disappointment at later seasons of the show, probably born of high expectations and I find I'm actually enjoying these episodes far more the second time around. The tight playing of the regulars and scripts dotted with very funny lines are fast making these timeless classics and the only real puzzle is quite how they kept the standard so high for so long.

Perhaps because it was so good, it haven't really had the heart to tune in the second season of Joey, because I haven't the heart to see a much loved character dying on his arse. If I'm missing out, let me know.

Bits n Bobs

Setanta has finally launched its Premier League offering, though I can't comment on the quality of the coverage because I was actually at the game it was showing. The bouquet of channels has impressed me in the few short weeks I've been able to receive it, but I see it as an add-on, rather than replacement for, Sky Sports.

Who coshed Patrick in EastEnders? Who cares? At least it gave us the opportunity to see Sean Slater pursued around the square by hordes of soap police in the least convincing chase scene since the days of closing titles in The Benny Hill Show.

Did we really need the sight of Dermot O'Leary is a skintight suit on Big Brother's Little Brother? Everything was on display. It put me right off me sausage and chips.

David Gest was just so bad on The Friday Night Project that I thought there would never be a more cringeworthy performance on telly this year. Then Tito Jackson turned up.

Star Stories take on Simon Cowell was littered with obvious and at times utterly cruel jokes. Funny though, wasn't it?