Reviews

1989: Day by Day, Radio 4
The Choice, Radio 4

Sample some refried 1989, served in bite-sized nibbles

Inside Reviews

Joan Does Glamour, ITV1
Hung, More4

Sunday, 18 October 2009

Never mind our sagging economy, it's slapping on the lippy that really matters

Last night's television: Proof that size is everything

Friday, 16 October 2009

Hung, More4
Modern family, Sky One
Curb your enthusiasm, More4

Last Night's Television: Prescott: The North/South Divide, BBC2
Inside Sport, BBC1

Thursday, 15 October 2009

I don't suppose Sir Thomas Legg has a lot of time to watch television at the moment, but since he's worked out the cost of Gordon Brown's repayment to the last 10p he might also be interested in the Case of the Admiralty House Teacup, a shocking abstraction of government property, which was revealed halfway through Prescott: the North/South Divide. To the protests of Pauline ("Oooh, John! For goodness' sake... they'll think I'm a kleptomaniac!"), the former Deputy Prime Minister trotted into the kitchen of his impressive Thameside penthouse to reveal the gilded souvenir Pauline had carried away with her when they left their grace-and-favour residence. Personally, I'm inclined to let bygones be bygones here, because there's something rather touching about the way that Pauline fills out the stereotype of one kind of aspirational Northern woman: modelling her style on Joan Collins, using her telephone voice when out in public, and showing such candid pleasure in the trappings of class. "Things can only get better," she said gleefully, lifting a glass of champagne to the camera as a Learjet flew the Prescotts down to London on the night of the 1997 election, "...but not much." She spoke too soon, really. Still to come were the mock Tudor boards fitted to their Hull constituency house, for which Mr Prescott claimed £312.