What to watch and review on Tuesday. Tonight's TV tips.
What to watch and review on Tuesday, October 18.
James and Emma from the first series have split
TUESDAY
EastEnders (BBC1, 7.30pm) Stacey is stunned to find out the salon is in serious debt. Why? There’s never anyone in it and its panoramic views of a tatty old market aren’t likely to attract too many new customers. Like all Albert Square businesses, it’s total crap.
Ordinary Lies (BBC1, 9pm) Return of the hit drama about a disparate bunch of workers and the fibs they tell. In episode one head of sales Joe (Con O’Neill) suspects his wife Belinda (Jill Halfpenny) is having an affair and goes to elaborate lengths to catch her out.
Married At First Sight (Channel 4, 9pm) What happens if you take two people who have never met before and persuade them to get married the first time they set eyes on each other? As we found out in series one, it always leads to disaster. More fun at the expense of fame hungry couples whose chances of wedded bliss are laughably slim.
There is 1 Comment
Ordinary Lives
Following from series one, which gave us an amusing tragi-comic tale of Jason Manford, series 2 opens with an altogether darker story. It has to be said the opening 3 minutes were possibly some of the worst painting by numbers character development normally seen in children's books - Con O'Neil is seen as the titular lead playing a jokey, blokey sales manager of a distribution warehouse somewhere on the outskirts of Nowheresville near borington! If any bloke walked into my office and shouted a sh**** joke as a spur to sell more stuff, I'd throw my over sized Sports Direct mug at him!
But the first programme of series 2 led with much darker subject matter that of adultery, child sex and exploitation and the demon battle of a man who likes a pint a little too much. The episode lurched from total and abject nonsense to some of the best performances on screen, O'Neil and his on screen wife the ever brilliant Jill Halfpenny - the first strictly winner! Created compelling and gripping TV it's just a shame that the other minor stories in the episode were weak, half arsed and (whisper it) a bit dull!
Ordinary Lives works because it takes and delivers seemingly innocuous and moribund lives and injects what can only be said as explosive elements to create the extraordinary and therefore make addictive viewing. It also shows that when soap stars leave the relative security of 5 shows a week this is exactly the type of show they can flex their acting muscles and prove they are not the one trick pony and are capable of more, unless you are Michelle Keegan!
This episode saw an emotional and troubling insight into what happens to a family when sexual predatory elements inter weave with jealousy, addiction and under age sex meld into a thoroughly modern but wholly underwhelming cocktail of issues that only slightly elevates it above any if the other soaps currently on offer.
Episode 1 and so far so so - we shall see if Angela Griffith and Matt De Angelo can propel Ordinary Lives to more than just and ordinary drama series