LUCY WORSLEY’S NIGHTS AT THE OPERA, BBC2, 9pm
WE often hear there aren’t enough women in presenting roles at the BBC. I assume it’s because Lucy Worsley has nabbed them all – and I can’t think why. There’s this new series, and then she’s on again later in the week with another new show on Tuesday night!
I find her pretty perkiness downright irritating, and when she starts mincing around in ye-olde-costume there’s enough steam escaping from my ears to power a freight train.
In this new series, Worsley does the same old schtick: dressing up in frilly costume and delivering cheery, sugar-coated history. This time it’s about opera and what it can tell us about society.
She says opera is “the greatest show on earth” and instantly patronises the audience by trilling: “maybe you’ve heard them in classic movies?” or perhaps we might know the tunes from the football.
She visits Milan and Venice and uses their famous operas as “a peephole to look back into turbulent times.” If only we could prise the history away from the silly decoration with which these series insist on smothering us.
FRONT ROW, BBC2, 7.30pm
The news this week has been about the horrors of Hollywood: the hideous sexual predators who use their money and power to exploit, abuse and frighten women. Watching this show will be something of a relief. I’ve criticised it in the past for being too lightweight, but tonight this light tone will be welcome, and will hopefully remind us that Hollywood is supposed to be about entertainment, escapism and glamour.
Kate Winslet appears this evening to discuss her new film The Mountain Between Us and, for 30 minutes, let’s try and forget the grubby reality of the film industry.
There’s plenty of scope for good old-fashioned escapism here as her new movie is described as a disaster-romance. Winslet and Idris Elba play two strangers who find themselves stuck on a snowy mountain after a plane crash and they must work together to escape. Can love blossom amongst the ice? It sounds good, but the film critics so far have not been kind.
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