Vera no more

I'd been worried about Vera's exit from Coronation Street but when it came it was quick, touching and moving. Liz Dawn will certainly be missed but her long term on screen partner Bill Tarmey more than did her proud with a wonderfully human performance as Jack tried to come to terms with events.

I've been critical of the show in recent years but they got this spot on.

Vera Duckworth. We'll never see her like again.

Jack attack

Four young people are in a van chasing a bloke in sports car with a fish for head. Another exciting edition of Scooby Doo? No, silly, it’s the return of Doctor Who for grown ups, Torchwood. The good news is here is that the show is no longer obviously trying to justify its post-watershed slot. The bad is that is it remains as shallow as it did in the first run.

The opener saw Captain Jack return to his team, quickly followed by Captain John, who bore a striking resemblance to Spike out of Buffy. Jack and John had “a past” while it quickly became apparent that Jack is far more mysterious to his team than he is to us. Didn’t they know he was a time agent? We did. Why not tell them that? Didn’t they know he was a con man? We did. Perhaps from an audience perspective Jack is not mysterious enough.

The rest of the team are so repressed it's ridiculous and all that buttoned up intensity sadly makes them seem constipated rather than sexy. Gwen is slightly less drippy than last time out but not much while one can only hope that Jack's return to the fun loving guy we first met in World War Two will help loosen them up a bit. Or will it? At the end of episode one Jack was handed a fresh reason to go all moody and introverted on us. A Grey day indeed.

The episode itself lacked substance, an amusing enough runaround which placed the team in jeopardy but it was all a bit on the obvious side. What this show needs is some proper science fiction. Perhaps we should send the writers some Star Trek DVDs so they can see how its done.

TV Medics

It's Wednesday night and when I should be curled up on the sofa watching the aforementioned Torchwood, I’m sitting in a cubicle of Accident and Emergency where my grandmother has been rushed in with breathing difficulties. Unfortunately, I’m also sitting with my mother who seems to have better knowledge of emergency medicine than some of the staff. Television you see, it’s a great educator.

Mum takes umbrage at my suggestion that she’s watched too much Holby City, having just explained to my Granny what the cannula is doing in her arm. By the time she advises the old girl to use some lip balm because “Oxygen can dry your lips out” and I ask her where she picked that up from - Diganosis Murder perhaps – relations are frosty. The A and E waiting room used to have a perfectly serviceable little portable telly on which I was hoping to catch some of Match of The Day. It’s been replaced by an expensive looking LCD screen which is imparting knowledge about Tuberculosis. They call that progress, apparently.

I've still got the whiff of hospital up my nose – how come hospitals smell of vomit when they used to smell of disinfectant? - when I tune in to ER.

The old warhorse seems to have a smaller regular cast than in previous years but things are looking up thanks to new nonsense new chief Moretti, played wonderfully by the charismatic Stanley Tucci. He more than makes up for the missing Luka.

One thing I've always wondered: why is Neela the only character that is allowed to swear?

Bacon sarnie time

The BBC have been celebrating a quarter of a century since BBC Breakfast Time first hit our screens. It seems odd in this multichannel 24-hour age, but at the time television in the morning was considered a massive deal, with loads of people saying it would never work. If you watched TV-am’s early output – virtually nobody did – you’d be forgiven for thinking they were right, but the BBC hit the ground with a cosily familiar mix that seemed to me to owe a lot to Nationwide. With dependable and staid (so we thought at the time) Uncle Frank Bough holding things together and Selina Scott giving it the Princess Di factor, it was a winning mix of news, horoscopes and quirky items, none quirkier than The Green Goddess popping up in various locations getting people to exercise fully clothed, often even wearing winter overcoats. It also gave us Francis “Fuffybits” Wilson who is still going strong on Sky today.

When TV-am finally sorted its act out and effectively stole the clothes – or should that be sofas – of the BBC effort, Auntie went very news orientated and stultifyingly dull. Justin Webb’s tenure in the hot seat was more likely to send you to sleep than make you wake up. A high point from its more formal days was on the morning after The Great Storm of 1987, when Nick Witchell had to host the show from the CBBC Broom cupboard.

Gradually the show has loosened up again and now we have Uncle Bill instead of Uncle Frank while Sian is a more than adequate replacement for Selina. There’s no room – usually – for Russell Grant these days, proof positive that some shows do improve with age. They should bring back the morning keep fit though. That was always hilarious.

ECILOP

Motorway Cops is the sort of cheap "ambulance chasing" type of show I normally shy away from but it was the advertised coverage of the summer floods and the impact on the M5 that had attracted my attention to this.

Sadly that didn't take up much of the show and we were treated in general to the usual docu-soap clichés of surly teenagers, angry motorists and for a bit of variety, an irate Romanian, all doing battle with stroppy cops. Some of them obviously weren't given traffic duties for their people skills.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with this sort of telly. I suppose the frustration is that they criticise people slowing down to stare at accidents in a programme that draws people in by their desire to do precisely that. I always distrust these fly on the wall jobs anyway because in my personal experience, film makers will adjust reality to suit the needs of their often preconceived finished product.

Slip sliding away

Dancing on Ice is that the more confident the celebs get, the more likely they are to have a mishap. Go on, admit it, you’re only watching to see Aggie fall flat on her mush.

Far and away the star of the show is commentator Tony Gubba whose attempts at describing the costumes of the contenders come across as pure Alan Partridge. I love it when old Schofield gets narked at the judges as well. Now if they could only inject a bit of personality into Torvill and Dean’s interjections off the ice, we’d have a decent Sunday night show here.

The big problem seems to be that the bloke off GMTV isn’t really terrible. He’s certainly no Strictly Fiona or Kate or even Fame Academy Penny. Letting the side down by being adequate, he really is.

The fine art of resurfacing

I’m sure we can all sympathise with Leslie Ash having been through a nasty super bug ordeal but a five million quid compo based on potential lost earnings? Had the people making the award ever watched Merseybeat?

Last week, I may have hinted that Martine McCutcheon’s performance in Echo Beach was akin to that to be witnessed inSunset Beach. My apologies to all those I offended with that comment.

I had no idea there were so many Sunset fans out there.

Later we’ll have some pumpkin pie

I suppose on paper it looked like a great idea. Rework one of the most popular fairy tales ever with a modern twist, throw in some of best actors in the likes of Harriet Walter, James Nesbitt and Maxine Peake and the result should be magical. Or so you’d think. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a right contrived load of old pants that owed more to Educating Rita than Cinderella.

Nesbitt was saddled with the role H.M. Prince, a Professor so up his own orifice, it was extremely difficult to understand just what Cindy Mellor - I kid you not, it was that clumsy – would ever see in him. If this is the sort of stuff Maxine Peake is doing these days, she’d be better getting back into Shameless. The real shock was how bad Walter was as a conniving academic whose schemes came to nought. Certainly Lucy Punch had a part to play, her performance being so unbelievable that it made the others look far better than they were merely by contrast.

This twaddle should have been put out of its misery at the planning stage. It’s hard to believe that someone ever thought this concept would ever work on screen.

Bong

Hooray! Now we can watch the News at Ten. That’s such a relief because previously, even though we only had a whole slate of 24 hour news outlets and BBC One providing a bulletin at that time, I still found myself bereft because Sir Trevor wasn’t on tap with his bongs. Not.

The show's long-awaited (by who exactly?) return got off to a rubbish start when we were treated to an exclusive interview with Hasnat Khan. A bloke talks candidly about his affair with a woman who has been dead for over a decade. Hardly 'Breaking News', is it? The BBC countered with John Simpson reporting from inside Zimbabwe where they are banned. Was this News at Ten or stunts at ten? It was getting hard to distinguish. To be fair the Simpson piece was worthwhile but surely would have fitted the Newsnight format far better than being dumped into the main evening news as a spoiler to ruin ITV News big night.

News on the two main channels at the same time can only be good news for their competitors.