Jonny’s Recent Decent TV

So, it’s 3:30 am and my mind is buzzing; it appears I have insomnia again.

I’m being dramatic, I don’t have insomnia, just awful sleep patterns. I find blogging helps, or so I tell myself. It actually furthers the problem and means I probably won’t get to sleep till at least 5am. I currently have little to wake up for though so its no biggie. I am unemployed and usually spend my days pottering around the house, keeping the fire stocked up, the odd bit of cooking and watching TV. Lots of TV. Not live daytime TV. No, high quality catch up programmes on iPlayer and 4OD. So I thought I’d share some of my current recent decent TV programmes.

1. Top Boy

2. Educating Essex

3. Louis Theroux: America’s Most Dangerous Pets

4. Coach Trip

5. Shipwrecked: The Island

My favourite this week has been Top Boy. Currently on 4OD, Top Boy tells the story of an inner city gang and it’s effects on the community around it. Set on a rough estate in East London, it’s gritty, authentic, excellently acted and has a great script. Ashley Walters (aka Asher D of So Solid Crew fame) puts in a decent lead performance as Dushane, a drug dealing gangster stuck in a life of crime. Oh and did I mention its beautifully filmed? The cinematography is stunning.

Educating Essex won me over during the first episode. It’s a delightful fly on the wall documentary about the day to day life of a secondary school in Essex. Focussing on the teachers and individual pupils, it’s a rare insight into how a school works, how heads and deputy heads deal with troublesome pupils and how teachers behave behind the staff room door. Over the course of 7 episodes I felt as if I got to know characters like Vinnie, a complicated, angry but loveable boy with a rocky home life and the head teacher, Mr Goddard, who has such a heart for the kids he quite often welled up on camera. This is an uplifting, honest and positive series about school life which raises questions about how we deal with troubled kids, how we teach children, and how we give them the start in life they deserve.

Louis Theroux rarely disappoints. In Louis Theroux: America’s Most Dangerous Pets, he’s once again delivered a programme full of odd characters with controversial views and strange lifestyles. This time he looks at people who keep dangerous animals as pets or breed them in captivity for commercial gain. The highlights were surely Joe Exotic, - a strange man with lots of emotion and complex issues - and when Louis meets a chimp. The chimp promptly climbs up his body and Louis starts panicking asking the owner “He’s not coming for my nuts?! He’s not going to bite my testicles?!”. Of course this show, like all of his documentaries, would be nothing without Theroux. His trademark expressions and and cautious but concerned questioning are present and correct and its all highly entertaining to watch. No longer available on iPlayer but here’s a few clips.

How can I not include Coach Trip in this list? Probably not the highest of quality but I love it. I can’t get enough of Brendan, the campest ‘international’ tour guide around and the ever changing bunch of quarrelling tourists who act as cultural ambassadors. They travel in a coach around Europe, taking in the sights and doing activities supervised by Brendan. Each night the couples vote for their least favourite couple and after 2 yellow cards that couple leaves the coach. The next day a new couple arrives to replace them. There are some hilarious moments and many a cringey cultural faux pas as you can imagine with a coach load of Brits. Once you’ve seen a few episodes you’re hooked - I’ve seen all 9 series now. Celebrity Coach Trip is too short to rival the normal programme but the latest offering does feature Michael Barrymore, John McCririck and Brian from Big Brother. The latter two are great value while Barrymore is painful to watch. Nevertheless, highly entertaining.

Shipwrecked. Hmm. It’s trash but there is something hugely entertaining about putting a bunch of young people on a tropical island and watching them squabble over stupid issues, for example, the best way to build a pig pen and an incident involving a stolen can of corned beef. They’re all useless at basic survival and terrible at organising themselves. Add a £100,000 prize to the mix and it’s every man for himself. In the latest episode the girls decided to build a wardrobe because they had nowhere to put their clothes (they fail to build the wardrobe). It’s all terribly fake, from the convenient friendships and alliances to the fact that the film crew are camped 100 metres away, filming their every move. Also, I’m not totally sure how much is constructed by producers living with them on the island. Ah well. Shipwrecked is clearly a trashy reality show. And I shouldn’t waste my time on it. And yet I still watch it every week.

Don’t watch Tool Academy, Made In Chelsea, The Only Way is Essex, How to Look Good Naked, Big Brother, Xfactor. These programmes actually make me feel sick.

Do watch (a few I didn’t mention above) - The Young Apprentice, Southland,  Seven Dwarves, Frozen Planet, River Cottage. All pretty decent, especially Southland if you want a high quality cop drama. River Cottage is a joke by the way. I don’t actually watch Hugh FW.

So basically I’m spending my days trawling through lots of mediocre TV so you don’t have to. It’s a tough job but some ones gotta do it.

Right, to bed I go.

This has been Jonny’s Recent Decent TV. Thanks for reading.