Old published stuff

Posted by Stewart Turner Cheap package deals to Spain, a chronic lack of investment and holidaymakers staying away in droves – the last thing the drizzly seaside town of Margate needed to hammer a final nail in the coffin of its faded seaside glory was the attention of the remaining eight Apprentices. In case you haven’t heard, there’s a credit crunch on, and rather than treat this year’s budding business tycoons to a trip sourcing mosque-shaped alarm clocks in Marrakesh, Sir Alan packed them off to the Kent coast, presumably where he used to hang out with a handkerchief tied over his Brillo-like hair in the days before he could afford to snort foie gras from the walnut veneer dashboard of his helicopter. After Evil Debra bulldozed the entirely reasonable attempts of Howard to head up Empire by teasing him with the hallowed position of “sub-team manager”, they hit upon the idea of rebranding the town as a gay resort, despite local girl Mona’s p...

Posted by Stewart Turner It’s a funny old world. Michael Portillo spent the last couple of decades spewing forth rabid, right-wing polemic as one of Margaret Thatcher’s most trusted Rottweilers. Nowadays, when he’s not cuddling up to Labour MP Diane Abbott on the Beeb’s weekly political schmoozefest This Week , he’s being asked to front serious documentaries about extreme ultraviolence. What’s more, despite once firmly planting his jackboot into the Great British Public by launching the Poll Tax, Michael reckons he doesn’t have a malevolent bone in his body. Or at least, he didn’t until he was packed off to the Bolivian Andes to witness the locals’ annual festival of violence, where the previous year’s scores are settled with a few bouts of good, old-fashioned fisticuffs. All this rough and tumble was to facilitate Portillo’s quest to find out what makes ordinary people commit acts of extreme violence. In one of the more interesting studies, he was presented with a couple of life-si...

To men of a certain age, David Hasselhoff will forever be the epitome of leather jump-suited cool and absolutely not a washed-up alcoholic who’s never quite lived down that claim to have single-handedly dismantled the Berlin Wall. And sure enough, The Hoff crops up for a cameo at the end of this series opener, albeit in a scene emitting a more pungent stench of cheese than a 60-year-old slab of Stinking Bishop. Hoffheads will doubtless have serious reservations about this Knight Rider remake, which aired in the US last year. To a certain extent, they’d be right to – but that’s not to say this two-hour pilot is awful. It’s just that after a reasonably entertaining opening, complete with the obligitory high-octane car chases, edge-of-the-seat casino showdowns and a bit of Man v Cold-Hearted Machine banter, it all becomes a little tedious. Of course, there’s some serious suspension of belief required from the word go. One has to wonder whether the Pentagon would really allow it...

Posted by Stewart Turner It was based on a 17th century Jacobean tragedy called The Changeling , but for all its highbrow literary pretentions, ITV’s glossy Bank Holiday drama Compulsion may as well have been based on an one of the more over-the-top episodes of '80s schlock-soap Dynasty, perhaps with a bit of Band of Gold thrown in for good measure. The Dynasty element was all beautiful people slurping Bollinger in bed and spewing forth the kind of dialogue which only ever happens on the telly, while the latter was taken care of by the ever-phlegmy Ray Winstone cleverly referencing Spinal Tap’s seminal Smell the Glove album with a lady of ill repute in the back of his boss’s Rolls Royce. ER and Bend It Like Beckham star Parminder Nagra played Anjika Indrani, a loaded little madam fresh out of Cambridge who enjoyed all the privileges life can offer - except the opportunity to choose her own husband. When her dad Satvik tried to fix her ...