XMAS TEEVEE SPECTACULAR

SCD FINAL!! Our sporting heroes had to do five dances each thanks to Tarbuck’s dodgy ticker. Wowsa. Mark came up trumps with a couple of excellent booty shaking latin numbers, a couple of OK ballrooms and a barnstorming freestyle with some great lifts. Whatever the haytas on the Guardian message board say, he was a much better dancer than Matt, always gave a better performance and had much better chemistry with Karen, so I’m glad he won. Karen had a breakdown as expected and Mrs Ramps made some barbed comments about how she supports her husband and loves him WHATEVER HE DOES, so there, tabloid scum!!

THE RUBY IN THE SMOKE!! (AKA: BILLY VS MRS OVERALL) This is based on a Phillip Pullman novel that I haven’t read and is a spiffed up costume drama that manages to include every cliché and narrative device known to Victorian fiction. Billy is a spirited young lady who is orphaned when her dad dies in a dodgy shipping disaster, so she hooks up with a Scooby gang of assorted nice people (including a dishy photographer that I am sure I have seen in something else, but I couldn’t quite place him). Julie Walters is excellent as her nemesis, a murderous granny who wants to get hold of a legendary ruby because some posh lady called her a slag ages ago. There are triads, opium dens, coded messages, confused parentage, reference to the Indian Mutiny and dastardly maharajas and lots of scenes where people run around Limehouse and hit each with bits of wood. It was all very sketchy and rather incoherent, but I still enjoyed it. The next instalment is due to screen this year and is called “The Shadow in the North” – possibly about the rise of Manchester United?

DR WHO XMAS SPECIAL: Catherine Tate mysteriously appears on board the tardis and makes fun of the doctor a lot. Good. It all turns out to be part of some dastardly stroke overcomplicated stroke implausible plan by a giant spider lady to hatch loads of baby spiders so they can take over the earth or something. One of Julie Walter’s villainous minions from Ruby in the Smoke also appears in this as Catherine’s dastardly fiancé, who was feeding her magic space juice as part of the plot. He croaks it in this one as well. The giant spider thing looks impressive at first glance until you realise that it can’t actually move and the actress is forced to wave her arms around and overact in order to convey her galactic eviltude. I thought Catherine Tate was quite good and the plot is OK but not great. Entertaining enough for xmas day and not bad compared to some of the rubbish plots they had in the last series. At the end there is some preview stuff for next series which will give all the dr who nerds plenty to wank about on the internets until it finally airs.

DRACULA: This is like a reimagining or something, which means that they totally mess the plot up. Jonathan Harker snuffs it pretty quickly, without even getting to partay with the three hot vampire chicks. What a swizz. Instead, the main character is Lucy’s husband who has got the clap and wants Dracula to cure him so he can get some loving off Lucy. This works about as well as can be expected. He is played by the blue eyed bloke off “Line of Beauty” and ends up getting his head ripped off. That’s what you get for standing around smirking for four hours in a ponderous drama about the 80s. The actress who plays Mina is intensely irritating and I am annoyed that the plot is not reimagined so that she dies horribly as well. Dracula is played by Shifty Marc Warren. He spends half the time going “grrrr” and waving his head around in slow motion and the other half poncing around in a Robert Smith wig and licking ladies necks lasciviously. I am asleep by the time Lucy turns into a satanic blood sucking hussy, which was probably the best bit. Oh well.