Big Brother finals (save BBs 1, 2 and 5) always have an air of the underwhelming about them, and BB11′s final looks to be no exception, with the majority of interesting and/or likeable housemates having walked or been booted already. We’re left with the likelihood of a Josie victory, which would probably be preferable to a Mario/Andrew/Dave victory (I am assuming a JJ victory is as likely as Elizabeth winning BB2 would have been). In all honesty, though I have found this series pretty entertaining, with a great-looking house and some genius tasks, I would still rather Titan or Bob Righter took the crown than any of the actual housemates.
Presumably knowing that the series finale itself was likely to be a bit underwhelming, Channel 4 have decided to use the night to launch Ultimate Big Brother. No idea why it’s on a Tuesday rather than a Friday or even a Wednesday but there we go.
On the forum I admitted that the purist within me would like the 11 winners (or 18 if you count celebrities. I am not counting Teen BB or Celebrity Hijack because, let’s face it, no-one else will) to do this show, purely as a best-of-the-best thing, but it was rightly pointed out to me that the winners have either been nice but dull (Rachel, Cameron), unlikely to appear (Kate, Mark Owen) or utterly vile (Anthony) so it might not be that exciting to watch. Instead we’re promised some of the most memorable housemates – how many is unclear – and rumours suggest this will definitely include celebrity housemates. I am hoping there’ll be at least one from each series but I think that might be doubtful simply given the number of contestants and the chances that they’ll want at least a couple from some series (2 and 7 spring to mind).
Aisleyne and Nasty Nick have already ruled themselves out of the show but it will be interesting to see if they resort to Nikki Grahame, Brian Belo and Charley Uchea or whether they’ve gone for some more interesting picks. Also, Chris on the forum was speculating that in every ‘Ultimate’ reality show, someone undoes all their previous goodwill in their reappearance, so place your bets now on who that might be.
The show runs for the best part of three hours tonight, so make sure the comfy seat you use for The X Factor is nearby.
Big Brother, Channel 4, 8.00pm
Who have been your best and worst BB contestants over the years? Comment here or in the forums and we’ll do a best and worst piece sometime in the run-up to the UBB Final.
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Big Brother 11,
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If you don’t care about the final of BB11 and want something to watch before Ultimate Big Brother kicks off tonight, then I recommend The Great British Bake-Off (heck, I recommend it even if you are watching the BB final). Mel and Sue are finally reunited, though are separated on-screen too often much to many people’s chagrin. Hopefully this will be the vehicle to launch their double presenting act again – as long as that doesn’t mean the Giles’n'Sue double act stops. Their upcoming Good Life show looks amazing.
Anyway this show is essentially Masterchef but with just cakes, and without Gregg Wallace saying ‘corrrrrr’ every ten seconds, i.e. a very splendid idea indeed. Famous cake lady Mary Berry and some other bloke were judging last week as the contestants started to be eliminated through a series of baking-related tasks. There were tears! There were disasters! There was no Christine Hamilton (robbed), but you can’t have everything.
The Great British Bake-Off, BBC Two, 8.00pm
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Normally at this time of year, we’d make a crack about dead parents, but given that the drama has been about the judges, with Dannii having a baby and Cheryl having malaria, I reckon the participants are going to have to up their game this year, and we might well see some dead spouse and dead children sob stories emerge.
The early audition shows are going to be somewhat bizarre this year with no Dannii or Cheryl until judges’ houses stage and a parade of guest judges, including Katy Perry, Geri Halliwell, Pixie Lott (for reasons no-one can quite fathom) and the Second Coming AKA Nicole Scherzinger, who is being hyped so hard by the show’s publicity machine that she’s clearly being lined up for the American series if not as a standby for Cheryl or Dannii in case either of them has to miss next year. The guest judge gimmick is unlikely to detract from the rubbishness of the auditions-in-front-of-an-audience gimmick, which is back despite everyone hating it last year. Hopefully it’ll go the way of having 14 and 15 year olds in the show and be quietly dropped after two series with no fanfare.
Other changes of note this year include the ‘overs’ category being shifted to 28+ and the arrival of Konnie Huq as the presenter of the Xtra Factor. Sadly, I doubt her fiancé, Lord Charlton of Brooker, comes as part of the package, but we can dream. Oh, and if I might give a little plug, some LC members will be recapping the whole shebang each week over on The Bitch Factor, where we will no doubt get progressively drunker each week.
The X Factor, ITV1, 7.30pm, The Xtra Factor, ITV2, 9.00pm
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The X Factor,
The Xtra Factor
Summer’s not quite over yet (despite what the weather might think) but the first of the big Autumn shows goes into previews in the West End today. Ira Levin’s comic thriller Deathtrap is about an established playwright who hasn’t had a hit in far too long, and is seeing the money run out. When an unknown young writer sends him a manuscript, will he go as far as murder to claim it as his own? Well yes, presumably, or else it’ll be a pretty short play. This latest revival casts Celebrity Homosexuals from both sides of the Pond in the leads, with Simon Russell Beale as the fading writer, and Glee‘s Jonathan Groff (aka Jesse St. James) as the young upstart, and they’re joined by Claire Skinner from Outnumbered. And because even Dame Theatre has to be FUTUREMODERN! these days, you can watch an online trailer for the production, which looks like it cost more than the entire budget of most fringe shows.
Deathtrap, Noel Coward Theatre until 22nd January
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Everything has its time, and everything must die… but when I saw the promos for series four of Ugly Betty, which begins on E4 tonight, I was surprised as I’d forgotten we still had another series to go before it ended. I suspect I can’t be the only one, which is surely a sign of how desperately it’s needed putting out to pasture. I say this with no pleasure, as series one was a triumph (see also: Heroes) but the last two series, much like a certain other US show we can name (Heroes) have been pretty flabby, punctuated with occasional moments of genius. Hopefully they’ve pulled out a few stops for this last outing, as even if the plots have been a bit lacking at times, and Betty’s character a little inconsistent, this is still one of the most entertaining ensembles on telly and they deserve treating well for their last run (even if it’s been shunted to E4 and only being shown on the ‘main’ channel for Sunday afternoon repeats).
Also ending, with its final episode tonight, is BBC Four’s The Great Outdoors. This three part comedy has been part of the Call of the Wild season and we wanted to preview it when it started but then our website went down for a couple of weeks. It stars Mark Heap, Ruth Jones and Katherine Parkinson, and it’s based around the exploits of a rambling group. It would actually make a perfect spin-off from Jam and Jerusalem, which is not an insult, as it has the same affection for its subject while also being able to gently poke it for laughs. Whilst Ugly Betty perhaps outstayed its welcome, this show’s stay has been all too brief – hopefully there might be a full series of it at some point.
Ugly Betty, E4, 9.00pm
The Great Outdoors, BBC Four, 9.00pm
Although its scheduling opposite Big Brother isn’t promising, new sitcom Roger and Val Have Just Got In still looks like it might be worth a watch (and there’s always the iPlayer, right?). Written by twin sisters Emma and Beth Kilcoyne (who also wrote BBC Three’s Dogtown), it stars Alfred Molina and Dawn French, which should be reason enough to watch it, frankly.
The focus is on middle-aged couple Roger and Val’s relationship and one of the writers describes it as a narrative comedy drama, so I am guessing it’s more from the Marion & Geoff school of comedy than the 2Point4 Children one.
Roger and Val Have Just Got In
, BBC Two, 10.00pm
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Tonight sees the third (and apparently final) series of Mistresses arrive on our screens. As with the previous two series, its arrival has been heralded with discussion of it being a ‘guilty pleasure’ – i.e. because it’s a bit daft and has four female leads, you can only like it in a somewhat shameful or ironic way. This is, of course, total rot, and probably sexist rot at that. Whilst it’s hardly gritty realist drama, there’s nothing in this any sillier than you find in your average episode of Holby City, Shameless or BBC One’s new, glossy drama The Deep.
In this third series we’re promised the arrival of Joanna Lumley, playing Katie’s mother, some ‘darker’ plots (darker than euthanasia and 9/11 fakers? The mind boggles) and Trudi owning a cupcake business, but sadly there’s no word on if we’ll discover the secret of Orla Brady’s eternal youthfulness.
Mistresses, BBC One, 9.00pm
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Religion is all over EastEnders at the moment. We’ve got Syed trying to reconcile being gay and being Muslim, Lucas trying to reconcile being a Christian pastor and being a serial killer, and tonight sees the oh-so-serious plotline of having a Jewish girlfriend and being uncircumcised. Let’s just say some of these storylines are treating religious beliefs and customs more seriously than others.
Also in tonight’s episode, Denise tries to escape, Fat Boy returns, Abi’s crush on the Square’s most unlikely sex object continues, and Phil Mitchell gets the news that a forgotten plot strand is about to be picked up again. The show giveth, the show taketh away.
EastEnders, BBC One, 7.30pm
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An idea hatched during Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ many Doctor Who-related train journeys to Cardiff, the two writers wondered why nobody had ever updated Sherlock Holmes to the present day. Well, someone sort of did, and it’s called House and is one of America’s biggest shows, but never mind that for now. Sherlock is a more literal take on updating Conan Doyle’s characters: The year is 2010, but Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are still sharing a flat at 221B Baker Street, and the former is still the cleverest man in any given room.
Benedict Cumberbatch plays the “high-functioning sociopath” (his own words) and in the first of three feature-length episodes he meets Martin Freeman’s Dr Watson who, like the original, is a veteran of Afghanistan. There’s also Rupert Graves as Inspector Lestrade and Una Stubbs (Una! Stubbs!) as Mrs Hudson, and with another nod to the books the opening story is called “A Study in Pink.” No word yet on what modern-day Sherlock’s drugs of choice will be, but with a big-name team both behind and in front of the camera, signs are good that this is a relaunch that could really work. After all, Gatiss and Moffat were the men behind the bootylicious, United Colors of Skaro Daleks, and as we all know they were universally popular with absolutely nobody objecting to the changes. Oh.
Sherlock, BBC One & BBC HD, 9pm
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Missing Masterchef? Well, as well as Mel and Sue’s Great British Bake-Off, the cookery-shaped hole in your life might be filled by tonight’s one-off programme, Great British Waste Menu. Over 90 minutes, Richard Corrigan, Angela Hartnett, Simon Rimmer and Matt Tebutt are going to do a bit of freegan-style bin raiding and cook a meal from the produce they find. Whether it has to be locally sourced, seasonal waste produce is yet to be confirmed.
