Here's a hit list of what keeping the Swords Ortho team amused over the next few weeks:
Celebrity Traitors UK (BBC)
This is a big hit with most of the team. Richard E Grant is on fire!
Great British Bake Off (C4)
Big on the front desk. I’m told that Nigella isn’t as good as Prue, and Prue wasn’t as good as Mary, but it’s early days and maybe Nigella will work out okay.
Battlestar Galactica (new version on Prime)
As a child I was really into Battlestar Galactica, although it wasn’t shown on UTV. It was one of those shows a space-mad kid knew was out there, was on other UK regional channels, was in America but not Northern Ireland. It was on RTE, but I wasn’t visiting relatives on the appropriate days to have seen more than a couple of episodes of it.
When it was rebooted in the 2000s, it was on a channel that I didn’t have so it was much the same situation. I saw half an episode in a gym once. Then BBC started showing it late night during Covid , a double episode each week, and I watched avidly and was not disappointed. Star Trek meets the West Wing, with various moral conundrums every few weeks based on the fundamental questions of “what would you do to ensure the survival of the human race” and “what truly makes us human?”
Monster (Netflix)
Big Brother (ITV2)
Apparently this is still a thing. I’m old enough to remember the original one with Nasty Nick and Anna Nolan.
Books
Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey
A disclosure here on my part - it’s pretty tough reading and I’m a technical advisor on the book. By and large, when a book/movie/TV show has a “dental advisor” then, unless it’s obviously about happy dentists, it’s not going to be a happy story. No further questions at this time. But Chidgey is brilliant if you like well written sentences that just go directly into your mind.
I still think the world needs a book where the hero is a dentist that solves mysteries at night.
Podcasts
A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs by Andrew Hickey
I’m not sure if giant tortoises live long enough to finish such an ambitious work, but this show is exceptional. The detail that the guy goes into to give a genuine context to the times these songs were created is fabulous and the depth that he gives to the origins and influences of the various songs is superb. Along with his dry humour and excellent narration voice and wonderfully named co-producer Tilt Araiza, this podcast is a dependable box of delights.
The current episode is about Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, and finishes a trilogy also involving Frank Zappa and the GTOs.
Radio
It’s A Fair Cop with Alfie Moore (BBC Sounds)
Very family-friendly BBC4 comedy show based on the real-life case book of policeman turned stand up comedian, Alfie Moore and occasional guest appearances from Zeus the police dog. Each episode involves some case that he’d worked on and he explains the options that the police have for dealing with situations and asks the audience what they would do, then goes through the legal implications for the various scenarios that they might pick.