CAN it be true? I have heard tell of places in this land where meals magically appear, a snug bed awaits at night, and someone else does all the cleaning.
One such haven offering the chance to live like a teenager is just up the road and featured in Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby (BBC2, Tuesday). I say just up the road but The Torridon is 65 miles from Inverness, which is in many ways part of its charm. That, and the general five-star luxury on hand.
Presenters Giles Coren and Monica Galetti did their usual routine of being guests and working as staff. During a training session (the hotel doubles as a college, one of many bright ideas that attracts top notch staff) he had to play an irate customer. He was surprisingly bad at it.
There is not much to Amazing Hotels. The places are wonderful and the programme says so, but it makes a change from the not so amazing hotels with which TV producers are usually obsessed. Sometimes you just want to see a place that you might actually visit one day.
Don’t know about you, but I have started to regard the titans on parade in Mrs America (BBC2, Wednesday) as so many Barbie dolls, to be ranked in order of affection.
There is Steel Magnolia Barbie, Phyllis Schlafly, played by Cate Blanchett. Doughty Republican, ferociously anti-women’s liberation, Phyllis’s coiffed barnet looks like it could stop a bullet. Then there is Hot Chick Barbie, feline and feeling fine Gloria Steinem (Rose Byrne), closely followed by Fearless Barbie, Shirley Chisholm (Uzo Aduba). But head and shoulders favourite so far has been Start a Barney in an Empty Room Barbie, Betty Friedan (Tracey Ullman). All together, the Barbies fight against and among each other to terrifically entertaining effect.
This week we learned a little more about Republican Barbie, Jill Ruckelshaus, played by Elizabeth Banks. It was Ruckelshaus’s job to lobby for equal rights from within the party, a task considered so important she was given no money to achieve it. Like the rest of the largely female cast, Banks had 50-minutes in which to shine and grabbed it. If nothing else this series has been a showcase for women actors in their Miss Brodie-like prime.
Even well-tuned hipsters like your reviewer (have you tried “the internet” yet?), can be late to the party on some things. BBC Three dwellers will already be familiar with The Young Offenders (BBC1, Friday), a comedy about a pair of Irish likely lads, Conor and Jock (Alex Murphy and Chris Walley) whose commitment to athleisure wear and bad haircuts knows no bounds. And did I mention that they are so thick they make Father Dougal look like Mark Zuckerberg?
There’s a lot to take offence at in The Young Offenders if you want to get worked up about stereotyping and sentimentality (episodes end with a hokey “lesson” to take away), but the boys are so endearingly daft it is impossible to stay mad at them for long. As for stereotyping, Peter Foott and Gillian Rogers’ caper takes prejudice about young scallies and throws it right back at the viewer much in the same way Rab C Nesbitt did.
The schedules continue to fill up with looks back at the lockdown. Maybe this need to revisit the recent past is a way of learning lessons for the future, or coming to terms with what we’ve been through. Paramedics: Britain’s Lifesavers (Channel 4, Monday) opened in April as Covid-19 cases peaked.
The men and women of the West Midlands Ambulance Service carried on working despite their own fears of contracting the virus and passing it on to loved ones. Karina, a single mother of two, had already caught it (but fortunately not passed it on). Another paramedic had come back to the job after experiences so traumatic they had left him with PTSD. A series to make you count whatever blessings you could muster.
Judy Murray’s boys (something in football I believe?) told her she would be rubbish on Celebrity Masterchef (BBC1, Wednesday). I’d love to say they were wrong.
Her first dish was an apple and raspberry crumble. A wasp could make an apple and raspberry crumble. Adding culinary insult to injury, she served it with double cream. “You had time to make custard,” said judge John Torode judgmentally. He declared her crumble “sandy” in texture, which I’m pretty sure is not what it was supposed to be.
She improved a lot in the restaurant round, despite being given a tricky dish of octopus to make. The final challenge found her rustling up a plate of chicken and rice, despite being told to up her game creatively.
It was no good in the end, and she walked after one round. Never mind, Judy. Anybody can stuff a mushroom. But being a good spud in your own right, and raising two champions, that’s cooking with gas.
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