Gary Bushell On The Box

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Turkey of the Year: The Wheel. This slow and suspect quiz averages a miserable eleven questions an hour. Even McIntyre couldn’t turn it into TV gold. ON Roast Battle, Brennan Reece told Kiri Pritchard-McLean her privates looked like “Chewbacca with a cleft palate”. Rude yes, but refreshingly un-PC. Random Irritations: VAR, VAR and more VAR. People who can’t time the button press on Tipping Point. “Real Housewives” who’ve never come close to housework. Smart, idealistic Catherine finds herself lumbered with a bullying man-child who burns down the school she opens to educate la-di-da court ladies and says things like “women are for seeding, not reading”.

Bushell Garry Bushell

Tarby claimed Billy had left a message in the snow and worse that it was in his wife’s handwriting. What was going through your mind?” asked the interviewer. “A 7.62 high velocity bullet,” he replied. THE Motherland women continue to flirt with me. “Garry with two Rs,” mused Anna Maxwell Martin’s besotted Julia. “So much softer, sexy, super... ”. Yeah, yeah. But I’m playing hard to get. After seeing her on Line Of Duty, only a hardened masochist would risk the chill of her disdain.

PIERS didn’t question Sir Keir’s claim to be grammar school educated, or mention that his school went private when he was fourteen. WORLD-weary, with a gravel voice and looking, “like a bulldog chewing a wasp”, Les Dawson was a deadpan comedy genius. Last series, serious sexual assaults in their cruise ship division were exposed. The victims had been silenced with hush money. The Roys weren’t involved, but the scandal ripped the family apart. Now it’s son Kendall versus the rest, which is not an even fight. THERE’S a core of truth behind the GB News mission statement. Mainstream TV does distort the news agenda to reflect and reinforce the fashionable middle-class opinions of media folk, and try to diminish or close down views they disapprove of. But the new channel’s opening night was shakier than the camerawork on The Bourne Ultimatum. There were sound problems, duff links, and sets apparently designed by Blind Pew... Give ’em time, though. BBC2’s launch night was worse – it was taken out by a power cut. Woman of the Year: Matilda De Angelis as Elena in The Undoing. Socially uninhibited, curvier than Silverstone, tragically murdered. Man of the Year: the inspirational Captain Sir Tom Moore.

Garry Bushell Garry Bushell

Jim Bowen used to tell contestants, “Look at what you could’ve won.” This was more a case of “Look at who we should’ve hung.”ALIENS in the Home Counties! Strewth. Most shire folk aren’t even keen on people from the next village. Turned out Scarlett didn’t know Nelson had lost his right arm at the Battle of Santa Cruz. Tsk, what do they teach kids at school these days? A sedate afternoon quiz is no place for Anne’s savage wit. She’d be more fun doing a red button commentary on Love Island. Imagine that! As sharp as Sharon’s chin...

Benny’s 1970s shows, repeated on That’s Xmas, have generated a tsunami of humbug. He’s been called “sexist”, even though blokes were the losers in his sketches, and “unfashionable” – heaven forbid! Funny moments included Alice’s visit to the “morgue” – shouldn’t that be the mortuary? – where she’s shown the corpse of a much fatter man. They’d have remembered Tarby’s best line: “I love watching those ladies’ teams play beach volleyball. Someone said, ‘Did you see the Brazilians?’ I said, ‘I wasn’t looking that closely’.”BAPTISTE hits like hailstones, being hard, cold and annoying. Are the split timelines there to increase dramatic tension or to misdirect us away from the plot-holes? The intense French detective came to the aid of Fiona Shaw’s Emma Chambers, the British ambassador to Hungary whose husband and sons had vanished mysteriously from their hotel on a hiking holiday. Irritatingly, there was a 14month gap between the disappearance and the present day where Baptiste has turned into Ian Beale: The Hobo Years, and Emma is in a wheelchair with the potential kidnapper caged in her car boot. It isn’t all bad though. The best thing the BBC have got right now is Inside No 9. It’s genius! Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton specialise in fiendishly clever, darkly comic twisted tales. This was a half-hearted, issue-obsessed, futile Covid-tamed version of an awards shows, with predictably dull speeches and winners awkwardly scrabbling about on Zoom. A wasted opportunity. I MISS Liam, who thought Elton John was two people – Elt and John. A future on daytime quiz shows awaits.

FORMER EastEnders star Debbie Arnold went on GMB to slag off Benny Hill while sitting in front of a Che Guevara poster. What was the thinking, Deb? Cheery old-school working-class comic – evil, middle-class mass murdering Stalinist – saintly? She’d be a shoe-in for the Ofcom job. Drama less so. Keeping Faith delivered but ITV’s Unforgotten and Sky Atlantic’s Mare Of Easttown hit harder. Line Of Duty was in the running until that wash-out ending. Now the martyr/maniac is reduced to ranting into his mobile, protesting his innocence and blaming former associate Jeff Lowe for setting him up. Should the Yanks free Joe... or bang up the lot of ’em? Random Irritations: TV guessing games. Wooden gangsters and cliched dialogue in Before We Die. Reality TV “stars” endorsing dodgy debt write-off schemes.Collyhurst-born Dawson discovered his gift in a notorious Hull club where, if they liked your act, “they let you live”.