DISPERATE HOUSEWIVES

Hurrah, Desperate Housewives is back! There have been rumblings from America about the 2nd series being a bit shit and losing lots of viewers etc but the first two episodes were not bad and the programme was never exactly top notch anyway.

I am pleased to say that Bree is still the best one. Rex’s death is giving her the opportunity to wear lots of fantastic black tailored outfits and her feud with Rex’s attention-seeking mother is class indeed (esp when Bree slapped her in the restaurant – gasp!). It is a bit dubious making fun of a character who is sad because her son has died but the script/actress handle it quite well and make you want to slap her too. In other news, Bree is probably going to be framed for Rex’s death and is still being pursued by creepy stalker George. Also her bad seed, gay son has yet to take his revenge. It’s all going on for Bree.

I like Gabrielle/Carlos’ fucked up relationship and it was nice that they admitted that they are both quite unpleasant people. There has been some semi-entertaining power struggles between the two of them so far but no real mention of Gabrielle’s pregnancy. Hot gardener John only showed up for a few minutes but was scantily clad for the whole of his appearance. Cheers!

Increasingly weird looking Susan and Edie are still trapped in the same tired bollocks of acting like schoolgirls and bickering over men. Sigh. I was quite impressed that dimbulb Susan actually worked out that Zach was Mike’s son without someone spelling it out to her in neon letters. At the mo the two women are arguing over Susan’s ex – I knew he shouldn’t be trusted as soon as I realised that he was the same guy who murdered Kimmeh’s best friend in the hospital in S1 of 24 and then kidnapped Mrs Kiefer and took her to the rape barn. Run away quick Edie before he involves you in international terrorism!

Lynette is still something of an evil bitch. I am waiting for her workplace shenans to kick in properly.

Where is Felicia??? That actress and character was class and everyone has completely forgotten about her.

The new housewife is played by Alfre Woodward as a kind of creepy fembot lady who can stone cold lie to people’s faces and has a suspiciously close relationship with her fit so-called “son”. I was wondering if they were an incestuous mother/son couple but then it turns out that they have a gimp chained up in the basement. Now I am wondering if they are an incestuous mother/son couple with a gimp chained up in the basement.

ROMEWATCHED

I sort of forgot to write about this in the run up to Xmas but it was all v enjoyable and I can’t wait until the next series. Urgent and key points are as follows:

· Servalan got Octavia to shag her brother to try and find out about Caesar’s secret epilepsy shame. When Attia of the Jullii Cooper found out, she had Servalan waylaid in the street, beaten, stripped and given an asymmetrical haircut that would not be fashionable for thousands of years. Game on!!
· Vorenus managed to socially climb all the way to being a Senator, but then someone grassed up Niobe so she jumped off a balcony rather than be stabbed to death by her irate hubby. Doh. I quite liked Indira Varma and she was also v beautiful.
· Pullo had a Downward Spiral after he emancipated his beautiful slave Loreal but then found out that she loved some other bloke. Head smashery ensued and Pullo ended up as a gladiator in the goriest sequence I have ever seen on telly. Ouch ouch ouch! Him and Loreal seemed to be friends by the end of the series though, so that’s all right then.
· Ceasar defeated Cato and those other blokes in another NO BUDGET OFFSCREEN BATTLE and turned into a megalomaniac dictator. Pompey’s ferrety son Quintus Billius Mitchellus showed up at Rome and began plotting with Servalan etc to get rid of Ceasar. We all know how that ends up…
· In the end, Ceasar is of course stabbed to death in the senate in a very gory and well done scene. He doesn’t say “Et tu Brutus” but you can tell he is thinking it through the power of acting.
· Brutus is something of a sniveller
· Servalan has Attia and the kids round for tea so she can be the first to tell Attia that her powerful uncle is toast, that she has lost her only protector in the city and that she had better fuck off out of Rome while she still can. Game Set and Match to Servalan. I thought Lindsay Duncan was a bit wooden in this part at the start but somehow she managed to turn her wooden expressionless face into a mask of pure malice, without even moving a muscle. That was pretty good acting. Attia appears to be up shit creek but since her poncey son ends up as (SPOILER) Emperor I’m sure she’ll be fine in the end…

Big Brother: Grumpy Old Men

Oh my God, this is turning out to be the biggest car crash ever, and of course is therefore completely irresistible. The biggest story of the first week was Jodie Marsh vs the Triumvirate of Evil. The fact that those bitter old bastards actually made me feel sorry for humourless thin-skinned freakface Jodie is surely a testament to their utter hatefulness.

Barrymore in particular turned into a hectoring psychopath who felt outraged and disrespected when Jodie wouldn’t follow his advice – well, actually I would not wish to accept advice from someone who lied to his wife re gayness for 18 years, was in rehab 8 times, held a party where some bloke was suspiciously bummed to death and is now a mumbling, slurring, emotional wreck. In a similar vein I do not often accept advice from the mad shouty scary man on the number 29 bus. Funny that. Even worse, Barrymore’s method of arguing was to shout at someone and then shout that they were being unreasonable and weren’t listening when they dared answer back.

That unctuous tosspot Galloway set himself up as Barrymore’s snivelling sidekick and said hilarious things like “There is a 55 year old man who is crying the garden because of you!” and blamed Jodie for thwarting Barrymore’s triumphant come back. What a delusionoid.

My second favourite event was George Galloway’s creepy sex cat game with Rula Lenska – I spent the whole episode watching between cracks in my fingers and howling with laughter/physical pain. Galloway will surely never live this down so at least some good will come of the fact that I am traumatised for life by those images.

Pete Burns is some sort of Bizzaro World version of Jodie Marsh and it is funny that most of the comments he made about her applied equally to himself. Currently going mental due to lack of cigarettes. Good.

The other housemates have rather faded into the background: Rodman is still a Neanderthal sex pest. Traci is still unnaturally perky and easy going. Maggot turns out to be completely dull without his posse of simpering halfwit bandmates. Preston and Chantelle are being a bit flirty. Chantelle seems nice but v thick and Preston’s band name is sounding incredibly apt. Faria is either boring or whiny and Rula is mumsy and strangely unreadable. Who knows who will go next, but the Triumvirate has already started bitching about “the Americans”…

On the other hand...

Sunday also saw the return of The OC. Yay! So, I missed most of the last series, but it seems that Ryan's troubled brother got shot over something or other by Marissa. Jim from Neighbours is dead, which leaves the way clear for Jennifer Aniston's other ex to come sailing back into the divine Julie Cooper's life. Kirsten is in rehab - eh? what is it with Americans and alcohol: one double vodka does not an alky make. But she's in there with Seven of Nine! Yay!

So anyway, they're all worried about, you know, this shooting thing which is like, a big cloud hanging over them. Ryan tries to look sorry that his brother is in a coma, and then they all skip off in Marisa's dad's yacht to frolic on the beach for one last day of freedom or something. I suppose the usual party around a marvellously appointed pool would be a little tasteless under the circumstances. But then the brother makes a miracle recovery and is encouraged by Julie to skip town on a Greyhound bus. Trey and Ryan exchange girly waves, and Trey looks happy to know that he is still the handsome one.

Seven of Nine has found a Jeffries tube that leads straight into the Cohen house and lurks outside the door looking thoughtful as Kirsten snivels about letting down her family or something. Watch out for those nanobots, Kirsten!

LOST

Is that it?

IS THAT IT?

Walt is the Destiny Child and has been carried off by a bunch of hairy men with guns. His Dad, Sun and southern chappie are swimming with sharks.

Locke's Leviathan entrance turns out to be a big dark tunnel. Hurley noticed the numbers too late to stop them from blowing the doors off.

Rousseau stole the baby, then gave it back.

Hobbit had a (very small) part of his head blown off by Sayid, who said it was the best way to cauterise a battle wound.

Shannon: still useless.

Errr...that's it.

OH BROTHER, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE

I think the only way we can express the horror of this year's "Celebrity" Big Brother is to go straight into the line up.

CHANTELLE
SARAH: This year's CBB has a special "non-celebrity" in the line up. The celebrities have to guess which one isn't really One Of Them. How the hell are they supposed to do that? Check for fairy dust? Anyway, Chantelle, a Paris Hilton looky-likey, only without the intellectual sophistication, is the fake celeb, apparently. She has to convince people that she was in a girl band called Kandyfloss but the Evening Standard says she is a celebrity of sorts because she impersonates a celebrity. Well, at least she actually looks like Paris: some of the lookalikes you see advertised in the back pages of The Stage kind of push the boundaries of the concept.

MARK: The idea of a fake celeb is quite a good one but it seems that Chantelle has already messed it up by giving different chart positions to different people. Doh, numbers are hard. Has something of the air of BB2 Helen about her – I especially liked her mangled cliché spouting. eg. “It’s better to live a life full of regrets than to…um…not.”

Quite.

MICHAEL BARRYMORE
SARAH: Yes that's right. Michael the man who, in finding his gayness, lost his ability to make make people laugh. And dead people started appearing in his swimming pool so he went to live in New Zealand (that'll teach 'em to beat us at rugger). There's a small indoor pool in the house.It might just be a big bath, of course, but...

Anyway the BB hired mob go suitably crazy, and Barrymore milks it like a Jersey calf in springtime. It's even worse when he gets in the house. Alcohol on all sides...nowhere to hide...

MARK: Seems to divide his time equally between crying, acting self consciously wacky (I’m a gynaecologist, ho ho ho), and droning on endlessly about himself in a slurred voice. Please no-one encourage to talk about himself (ie look at him) or I will go insane. Seems to be mentally unstable and therefore probably Should Not Be In The House. I suppose the sweet sweet smell of attention was too much for him to resist.

PETE BURNS
SARAH: Eh? Oh no I really didn't need to see the results of Pete "Dead or Alive" Burns's plastic surgery disaster. When I saw the tattoos I thought he might be Lemmy, but I was wrong.

So far, so tragic.

MARK: Aaargh, my eyes. I really did not need to see photos of pus shooting out of Pete’s distended lips. Another one who can bore for England when talking about his fascinating self – esp I am bored with his non-insightful thoughts on gender and the political consequences of looking like a demented Italian porn star. Also has the unlikeable habit of saying cruel things to people as a joke (ie calling Rula a “dried up old husk” when she said she tried to adopt children once). This grotesque freak needs to fuck right off. Ha ha, only joking, Pete! His affection for alledged “gorilla skin” coat could mean that the fwuffy wuvwy animal loving public will vote him out pronto.

TRACI BINGHAM
SARAH: You know you're in trouble when a woman announces herself as the first African American woman to wear the Baywatch swimsuit (take that Rosa Parkes!). I didn't know a single body could handle so much silicone and still be classified as human.

MARK: Went to Harvard apparently so must be reasonably intelligent, but hides it well with continued routine of pouting, boob thrusting and insincere cooing. Seems alright when she settles down but has a typically LA excessive regard for Michael’s tales of rehab/coming to terms with sexuality/personal struggle to overcome surmountable odds blah blah blah. Stop encouraging him, Traci!

MAGGOT
SARAH: Ewww...who's this? A pallid young man with a hooked nose and a tracksuit who says he's from a popular hippety hop combo called Goldie Looking Chain. I think I might have seen them on Popworld. He'll be either totally irritating or quite sweet, I suppose. But he really needs to get some sun. This year's Bez - though not nice enough to win.

MARK:Is supposed to be the comedy relief housemate presumably (and gains points for telling people that he was just there to make up the numbers) but the fact that he has had practically zero screen time since the first night means that he is presumably not being very funny. I had a fear that he would form an annoying Lad Axis with Preston (like Kenzie and that dick Jeremy last year) but that doesn’t seem to have happened yet.

RULA LENSKA
SARAH: Blimey, my adolescence is coming back to haunt me. Former Minder missus bluntly admits that this is all a publicity stunt to let agents know that she is still alive. I quite like her because she reminds me a bit of my very actressy ex-neighbour. Bet she turns out to be a right pain.

MARK: I last remember her playing Frank Butcher’s dodgy bird in some heinous EE foreign weekly special (Bring Me the Head of Francisco Butcher) and am fascinated by her immobile hair helmut. Overdid the camp grand dame actress routine in her entrance video but seems quite sensible and nice now she is in there.

JODI MARSH
SARAH: What, are they going to bring Kenzie back as a surprise guest? Can you imagine the scene if she and Traci try to go through a door at the same time?

MARK: Looks very strange with her tiny pointy face, misshapen nose and freakishly white eyes and teeth (can you have the whites of your eyes bleached???) and that’s just talking about her from the neck up. Also that assymetrical pony tail is doing her no favours. She has spent her whole life trying to turn herself into some kind of low rent sex symbol but now spends all the time moaning that everyone thinks she is a dozy slapper. Has absolutely no sense of humour about herself and it’s not surprising that Jordan has beaten her in the Celebrity Battle of the D-List Norkbags.

DENIS RODMAN
SARAH: I don't know who this bloke is, but it says here that he's a cross-dressing ex basketball star. He's got a lot of very strange piercings and there seems to be 'history' between him and Traci. Maybe he borrowed her thong and never gave it back.

MARK: I had vaguely heard of him, mainly due to his high profile shagging of Madonna & Carmen Electra etc (who was also in Baywatch, which is presumably how Traci knows him). Seems to be completely laid back and not to give a toss about anything which is quite refreshing, but presumably his notorious horniness will get the better of him soon enough. Has already been making “moves” on Chantelle.

FARIA ALAM
SARAH: So she slept with some football execs. I mean, at least footballers are fit and fanciable (bonjour Thierry!), but a middle-aged balding manager and FA exec? Puh-leese. Maybe she's the dummy celeb. Or maybe they'll make her masturbate a gerbil or something like they did to that one who got txted by David Beckham.

MARK: Dear Faria, If you hate the way the tabloids raked you over the coals in the past then the best thing to do would be to NOT GO ON CELBRITY BIG BROTHER. Signed, everyone.

PRESTON
SARAH: Another member of a popular beat combo - one of those new ska bands, I believe. Baby mods like him were ten a penny when I was a girl. Possibly the Eye Candy. Greeted Barrymore with "Awight?"

MARK: I would not look at him twice in an indie club but is the closest thing to a good looking man this year. Nice tattoos but no discernable personality as yet. He guessed Chantelle was a fake though.

GEORGE GALLOWAY
SARAH: George Fucking Galloway? Hang on, Parliament's in session. Isn't there something else he should be doing? Like representing the interests of the people of Bow? Lots of boos from the audience. Evidently not many Socialist Worker's Party, sorry Respect party members are BB fans. Or maybe there are a lot of people from Bow.

MARK: At least his constituents will actually get a glimpse of him for once, that is until the toxic levels of smarm that he emits melt out their TV’s. When he is on screen, me and my boyfriend spend most of the time arguing whether he most closely resembles a used car salesman or a bent 1970s copper. (Ed: you’re both right!)