Summer Heights High
BBC3, 10.30pm
Reaper
Channel 4, 11.05pm
A big hit in its native Australia, Summer Heights High is a cross between The Office and Bo' Selecta, with additional elements which will have you playing that great new parlour game: Hey, Which Recent Cutting-Edge Comedy Did That Bit Come From?
Strewth, he’s stopped being bonzer! In the latest edition of Ray Mears Goes Walkabout, Ray avoided doing what he usually does with such bullish verve, to wit, he failed to set alight the entire
Australian outback in the traditional
lo-tech bush-life manner he promotes.
Whither Taggart? Or withered Taggart? Reader Jim Brooks, of Aberdeen, a keen fan of the venerable Glaswegian detective show, has helpfully e-mailed an action plan to ensure it stays on track.
River city
BBC1, 8pm
With shame, I confess to having failed to keep up with recent developments in the native soap which currently attracts more viewers north of the border than EastEnders. It is plainly my loss that I have hitherto been unaware that River City boasts TV's most wondrously named character: Sharon McLaren
(she hails fae Arran!)
Sharon McLaren was largely absent from last night's River City double-dose. Perhaps she was in Spain with Wayne McLean, or at a do in Achiltibuie with Louis McCue and his brother, Hughie? But I digress.
Terrestrial
The Great British Body
ITV1, 9pm
Over three successive nights, Skinny and Tranny - whoops, that's Trinny and Susannah - will be descending on Gateshead, Brighton and Birmingham trying to persuade the locals to get their kit off. In Gateshead, they meet elastic granny Marjorie Bradbury, who, aged 90, can still do the splits and teaches aerobics. She treats T&S and the waiting crowd to an impressive routine of gymnastic moves but says she won't get naked because she has to think about her grandchildren. In Birmingham, Adrian Rollinson displays his brute strength by lifting Trinny and Susannah in each arm at once - sadly not going on to crush them both to death.
As more joyful nonsense unfolded in My Name Is Earl, the slacker surrealist duo of Randy and Earl took their
latter-day Abbott and Costello cross-talk act back out into the wider world of Camden County, temporarily
forsaking the confines of A J Johnson Prison (official motto: “Safer than you think, but still not that safe”).
River cottage spring
Channel 4, 9pm
Filth: the mary
whitehouse story
BBC2, 9pm
IN River Cottage Spring, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall made the job of reconnecting with the land seem appetising fun. Seasonality? Yum, yum: just boil a free-range egg for four minutes and steam some fresh-picked British-grown asparagus above it for the same length of time. Anoint the green spears with cider vinegar and dip them into your egg's sunny yoke: tasty asparagus soldiers!
Ten years younger
Channel 4, 8pm
STEP this way for curves with verve! Change your hair colour from dirty to flirty! Banish your belly by watching the telly! Returning for its fifth series, Ten Years Younger continued to hold forth an alluring prospect: cosmetic improvement can be easily attained by the repeated declamation of rhyming slogans (NB: it isn't actually possible to banish your belly just by watching the telly; I made it up).
Kiss of death
BBC1, 9pm
PUCKER up, fish-face. Kiss of Death was a forensic cop show which could have been titled CSI: Nightmare Scenario Rubbish, positing as it did the existence of a boffin-esque serial thrill-killer who was also a scrupulously tidy devotee of forensic cop shows.
Ray Mears goes walkabout
BBC2, 8.15pm
Greek
BBC3, 9.10pm
HE'S a beefy and bullish-looking cove, is Ray Mears. Something of the Boris Johnson about him; same bluff face and blithering manner - although, unlike Boris, when Ray opens his mouth to share his natural history insights, you don't get the impression that an especially dim village has lost its chief idiot. You can learn a thing or two from Ray.
Midnight Man
ITV1, 9pm
The Invisibles
BBC1, 9pm
Amid distressing scenes of media convergence, Midnight Man ended with catastrophic news for Britain's press. Signalling the demise of the chip-wrapper industry, Midnight Man's denouement had the nation's dailies entirely bypassed by an eight-year-old girl equipped with a mobile phone, a CD and an internet-enabled PC.
My New Best Friend
BBC4, 9pm
Following my recent review of the lame ITV1 literary tour conducted around Edinburgh by Melvyn Bragg, a number of readers e-mailed to express outrage at my having linked J K Rowling's Harry Potter books to the "infinitely superior, far more insightful and laugh-out-loud funny" Jennings public-school yarns by Anthony Buckeridge.
Jonathan Meades:
magnetic north
BBC2, 7pm
Mum and me
BBC1, 10.35pm
The supersizers go... wartime
BBC2, 9pm
ARCH and orotund, Jonathan Meades strutted around Magnetic North's assorted supra-southerly climes, from the Baltic to Belgium, being dangerously learned while employing unfashionably brainy words. He was unspeakably great. And ineffably magnetic.
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