Yvonne Crotty
Great to see Yvonne Crotty and Ger McDonald of the Waterford Fashion Design label Bonzie feature so well on Nationwide. They are a credit to Waterford with their mostly e-mail or web based fashion design business that links innovative style with a rich funky Victorian mood of corsets, ruffles and fastidious gatherings of material into an impressive business. The programme also featured two Waterford dancers Trish Murphy and Jess Rowell as models to show off the exciting range of their designs.
More Foyle
Despite, planning to finish the fine wartime copper series Foyle’s War UTV have had a change of heart. No doubt the ending of A Touch of Frost and the collapse of The Bill, the new powers at ITV have revived Foyle despite the war ending. They have kept the title and the excellent Michael Kitchen shines quietly as Foyle.
The opening story found space for his beautiful driver played by Honeysuckle Weeks and she has a young man love interest. A top class story to keep the mind busy as Foyle unravels like Sherlock Holmes a tale of Russian prisoners, British national security, a cover up and some of the best acting on television.
Fame
Not to be outdone, RTE1 have come up with another wannabe show FAME The Musical with the initial judges to select the fifty or so who go on to FAME School. These judges were Robert C.Kelly who revived Twink’s career and who will produce Fame for the West End. He was hard in a nice way but honest. Simon Delaney who came up through the amateur ranks was too kind to average singers and Jacinta White, a fine show performer, was a tad generous as well. The pace and editing was poor at times and lacked zip and pizzazz. Only Waterford face I saw was eliminated in London.
Erica Gimpel from the original FAME TV show as well as stints in ER and Grey’s Anatomy, will be part of the final selection team. I was surprised when neither of the three judges had heard of the US musical The Wild Party by Michael John La Chiusa. (I have a copy of the script on the backseat of the car.)
Is this show going to excite the nation? I have my doubts.
Passion
With a script by Kay Mellor and Billie Piper in the lead role, A Passionate Woman, seemed to promise quality viewing but it turned out to be a grim grimy, shabby love story or love delusion down back alleys, horrible tenements of houses.
Neighbours had affairs with next door neighbours; husbands borrowed coal from backyards and washed themselves in the sink. The stink of rancid lives hung over the first episode and it was just unrelenting squalor. Watching it was hard work.
Midsomer
Are you enjoying the last round-up of John Nettles as DCI Barnaby in the Midsomer Murders? Last week was a classic with a murder in the summer house, a sleep-walking, red herring, a murdered community watch councillor, a posh party in a marquee and a technical plot that took a bit of figuring out. No doubt ITV are wise enough to continue with a new Barnaby as the demise of Frost and The Bill will not do any favours for their ratings.
Mad Men
Series three of Mad Men has ended with Don and Betty going their mutual ways – she is off to Reno for a quickie (six weeks) divorce with an older and dare I suggest creepier man like her dominant father. The men have robbed the client list and are off to set up on their own in a hotel as an ad agency.
The old drinkers and smokers in snazzy suits even get some of the women to join them but the women refuse to get or make the coffee. Shucks. But where is season four going?
Poverty
If you think we suffer from recession, NAMA and lack of borrowing power then do look out for the BBC2 series Welcome To Lagos, a city of over 16 million workers, where the population by 600,000 each year as poor Africans migrate to live in squalor in Lagos, Nigeria. It looked at workers or rather scavengers who root through steaming fetid superdumps to find cans to sell or to turn others rejects into necessary food. There was the young guy Slavender trying to make a roots n’ rap record and get it played on the radio. It would turn your stomach to see the poverty and the awful grind of it all. The young musician got in a fight and took out another man’s eye and compensation had to be agreed on a dump site. We just know how lucky we are. Give praise folks, there are people worse off than we are. Give praise and be thankful.
Young Musician
One of the joys of television watching and listening is the return to BBC4 of BBC Young Musician 2010. It is a real joy and treat to see and enjoy the cream of British musical talent in front of a quiet audience. You get to hear such a range of music some of it from new composers or seldom heard composers. Some of it is clinically and technically brilliant and a large emphasis goes on that. There are no tears, no tantrums, no intrusive parents and no Graham Norton or Ant and Dec, just a chance to relax and enjoy fine and wonderful music from tomorrow’s stars.
