Fargo: perfect pitch black comedy
By Caroline Dowse @toongirl83
I'm going to set my stall out early here - Fargo is brilliant TV. Innovative, clever, dramatic and funny - this comedy is blacker than Simon Cowell's soul.
By Caroline Dowse @toongirl83
I'm going to set my stall out early here - Fargo is brilliant TV. Innovative, clever, dramatic and funny - this comedy is blacker than Simon Cowell's soul.
Killer Women With Piers Morgan (ITV, 9.15pm) After their acrimonious split, 15 year-old Seath Jackson agreed to meet his ex-girlfriend Amber Wright, also 15, to talk things through. When he arrived he was set upon by Amber and her friends – who beat, shot and kneecapped him before setting him on fire and throwing his body into a quarry. Piers meets Amber at Florida’s Homestead Correctional Institution to grill her about her gruesome story.
The Week The Landlords Moved In (BBC1, 9pm) The Beeb offers landlords the chance to look great by getting them to spend a week living in their long-suffering tenants’ shabby homes so they can experience all that’s wrong with them before theatrically putting everything right.
EastEnders (BBC1, 7.30pm) As if Albert Square’s pervasive dreariness wasn’t bad enough already, they’ve brought back Robbie Fowler to save the day. Good luck with that. A thrilling development as Dean Gaffney’s clapped-out character returns to take up his high-flying job as the market’s new part-time enforcement officer. Brilliant.
By The TV Grump @TheTVGrump
Formulaic television is big business now. Nothing is cheaper and easier to churn out than programmes where essentially the same thing happens, day in day out, week in and week out.
Come Dine With Me, Four In A Bed, A Place In The Sun, Flog It, Bargain Hunt. The list is almost endless. And what do they all have in common ? Viewers love them. They're loyal to them. They can't get enough of them.
By Matthew Gormley @MatthewPGormley
For nearly twenty years, Blind Date was the bread and butter of Saturday nights. It launched in 1985 and quickly gained a huge following, with over 17 million viewers regularly tuning in to the matchmaking show. For many, it became an important part of their early evening, gearing them up for a night out.
By Andy Lloyd @ScarfmanAndy
Jimmy McGovern's BBC1 sociopolitical drama Broken is unequivocally the best thing on TV right now. This week was the fourth instalment and its brilliance remains ever strong. It is brilliantly written and acted and has truly secured actor Sean Bean's status as being a living national treasure.
SATURDAY
Pitch Battle (BBC1, 7.30pm) After the inevitable axing of Gary Barlow’s flop Let It Shine, the Beeb wheels out another talent search in the desperate hope that this one will work. Choirs and singing groups battle it out in a series of vocal challenges designed to impress judges Gareth Malone, Kelis and Will Young. Who will make the grand final?
What to watch and review on Friday. Tonight’s TV tips
Coronation Street (7.30 & 8.30pm) Jilting Johnny has second thoughts about calling off his generation gap wedding to jabbering Jenny. Meanwhile, Aidan struggles to keep his dangerous double life a secret.
Ackley Bridge (Channel 4, 8pm) Week two of TV’s weird and unwonderful school for scandal… a kind of Waterloo Road without the laughs but with racism. Headmistress Mandy (Jo Joyner) is less than thrilled after her PE teacher husband punched a problem pupil in the face. The rest of the kids seem to be obsessed with hijabs. Is this anything like life at a real school?
Having failed miserably to discover a grown-up star, TV’s epically pointless The Voice has moved on to not discovering a child star. No one knows why.
Welcome to The Voice Kids, your golden opportunity to endure youthful show-offs singing tunelessly shortly before they experience the heartbreak of devastating rejection. Brilliant. That’s entertainment. Or is it a form of cruelty? You decide.
Broken (ITV, 9pm) If you like your TV dramas dark, depressing and devoid of hope, Jimmy McGovern’s latest slice of relentless despair should be right up your street. After last week’s poorly-staged police shooting of vulnerable teenager, Father Michael (Sean Bean) continues to seethe over the injustice of it all. Oh, and just to cheer things up, the troubled priest confronts the teacher who abused him when he was a kid.