For a moment when I saw the title of the RTE1 Bank Holiday Monday programme – My Beamish Boy – I thought it might be about Waterford actor Jamie Beamish, who had a cameo role in the recent Russell Crowe Tobin Hood movie. But no, it was a delightful little nostalgic documentary about the importance of the Cork brewery Beamish and Crawford.
Surviving pensioners reminisced about how the work there was life, not just a way of life and I felt a pang that Waterford people will soon be doing the same about the Glass Factory.
John Spillane sang a sad nostalgic song My Smiling Beamish Boy and again I wondered will somebody pen a Glass song rather than the I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles tune used so well in the Jim Nolan series for WLRfm.
Flash
In the final episodes of Flash Forward the makers must put most of the characters in a position in the story where it seemed as if their flash forwards couldn’t happen. A sort of Lost moment and then as part of the magic of TV they reversed it again so that the events did happen. Many did not keep up with this confusing series and because of falling viewing numbers the series has been killed off. So some of the unanswered questions will not carry forward into another series. The flash forward was seven years forward. Did some studio or scripter think the series was going to run that long? If you believe in the carrot and donkey truism that we must be asses to allow TV to manipulate us for over twenty weeks and then fade to commercials.
Mary’s Back
Not that football is going to fill our screens for a few weeks it’s great to see what programme makers have lined up to please the rest of the viewers. BBC2 has brought the feisty redhead back in another series of Mary, Queen of Shops. This time she meets more than her match with Angela Maher who runs a small London bakery cum teashop and Angela is thirty-six years in the business and is not for changing. Great to see that Mary Portas allowed the BBC to broadcast this almost failure, as try as she might, the lady of thirty-six years wants no trick with fancy breads, yummy mummies and trendy cakes as she continues to make plain bread, buns and teacakes sprinkled with hundreds and thousands. It was fascinating to see Portas thwarted every which way she tried.
BAFTA Disappoints
In a low key show in which BAFTA awards went to middle of the roads often the more entertaining rather than arty stuff. Simon Cowell got a special award for Britain’s Got Talent and X-Factor. Julie Walters got Best Actress for Mo Mowlam and Kenneth Branagh got Best Actor for Wallander but I still prefer the Swedish sub-titled series on BBC4. The Thick of It got three awards and well done to Rebecca Front and the brilliant Peter Capaldi.
Wives?
BBC2 have the clever notion to give wives another look at Tribal Wives, with a new series. No WAGS here just sort of unhappy sensation seekers who go off to inhospitable out of the way places to work like servants in camps and tents for a month. First up was a trendy blonde of 23 who lives for a month as a scruffy dogsbody in a manky tent with a Turkish family of nomadic goat breeders. Was there a smell? There must have been but I don’t know people volunteer for these programmes but by the end of it there was love, tears and regret and I suppose camel breath.
Crazy Times
So, Big Brother is back for series 11 and the end of the bright, quirky, stupid, bitchy, wannabe, spite, spit and under the duvet sex from people with attitude, craziness wannabe celebrities, fake tan, fake personality and hype, lots and lots of hype.
Simon Cowell got awards but the public thwarted him by voting for another dance act. It will be hard for him to make money out of this act, not like a singer or musician.
Britain’s Got Talent had a great final night with a sub teem boy band, a dancing duo, a brilliant dog act with Chandi and a singing accountant. Apparently the UK tip was for Tina and her dog Chandi to win but Cowell’s people suggested the dog was too old. Anyhow, the thirteen person acrobatic troupe Spelbound won out, must have been the odd spelling!
