Friday

WHEN POP RULED MY LIFE: THE FANS’ STORY, BBC4, 9pm

THE word “fan” comes from the Latin “fanaticus”, meaning to be “insane and divinely inspired”, and there’s certainly plenty of insanity involved in this look back over the history of pop music from the perspective of its wild, howling fans.

Naturally, it starts with Beatlemania, with screaming, fainting and “involuntary urination”, all prompting the fear that “the flower of British womanhood was going to the dogs”. We learn that not a single note of music could be heard at Beatles concerts above the sound of teenage screaming and there’s footage of a nippy Paul McCartney saying there’s no point in the band performing live as no-one can hear them! This led The Beatles to retreat to the studio where they transformed themselves into artists rather than cute pop stars. So, you could say the crazy, irritating girls inadvertently helped create Sergeant Pepper.

Then we move on to the 70s and the arrival of Mods. They were fans who disdained the notion of screaming, being more concerned with fashion and tribalism, but whether the crowds are yelling or concentrating on looking cool, there’s undoubtedly a fierce adoration at work, and this programme asks where it comes from and what it drives us towards.


I AM EVEL KNIEVEL, QUEST, 9pm

I FIRST learned of Evel Knievel via the character of the daredevil motorcyclist, Lance Murdok, from The Simpsons, the one who was always ending his stunts in a fiery heap in some stadium, bravely waving a broken arm to the cheering crowd. When my Dad told me he was based on a real man, I may have copied Bart in crying, “Ay caramba!”

This is a profile of American daredevil Evel Knievel, who died in 2007 – and who died, incredibly, of old age and lung disease rather than by being crushed, smashed or incinerated.

He’s best known for jumping a row of 14 Greyhound buses on his motorbike, and for leaping over rocky canyons, and even Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, but it’s often forgotten he also jumped over pits of rattlesnakes and lions. He was fearless – or perhaps had a need to experience the extreme which overrode any natural human response to danger.

His family and friends gather for this profile to remember him, pay tribute, and share some scary anecdotes of “The Last Gladiator”, as he became known. Of course, terrifying footage of his famous stunts is also included.


Saturday

THE JOHN BISHOP SHOW,BBC1, 9.45pm

THIS is a new series and it’s trying bravely to resurrect the old 1980s staple of Saturday night TV: the variety show. That’s a very welcome development because anything is better than those identical talent shows, and there’s something pleasantly old-fashioned (or shall we call it “retro”?) about a variety show.

The only problem is that there’s very little by way of actual variety in this one. It’s mainly a parade of stand-up comedians, interspersed with some more stand-up comedy from the host, John Bishop.

The show starts well with an acrobatic troupe, one of whom ends up balanced on Bishop’s head, prompting him to yell: “I’ve started the show with a kid on me ‘ead!” The boy who’s perched up there is trembling and wobbling ever so slightly, which just lends the scene the messy, live feel such shows need. Then we have songs from Paul Weller, but the rest is just a succession of mildly funny stand-up comics.

This series could become quite decent, especially when faced with the appalling ITV Saturday schedule, but they’ll need to inject some “variety” to the line-up.


IT WAS ALRIGHT IN THE 1970s, MORE4, 10pm

THE 1970s have had an extraordinarily bad press recently as hundreds of skeletons come clattering out of hundreds of closets, but this chirpy little programme reminds us of the fun, light-hearted and innocent side of the era.

Matt Lucas is the jolly narrator of this two-part series, which takes a look at the funniest and strangest of that decade’s TV shows, most of which seem to include elements of “sexy sexism, bad taste, homophobia and, of course, a cuddly toy”.

Some of the TV stars from the 70s are interviewed – those who are still at liberty, at least – and also the creative teams and production staff who worked on the shows.

TV in the 70s still had the power to unite a whole family, especially with light entertainment on Saturday nights, and so there is a warm thread of nostalgia running through this programme, as well as some gentle mockery.

Besides dissecting what made the shows a success, we get to marvel at the sight of people smoking on talk shows and how some hideously crude jokes were allowed to be broadcast before the watershed because… it was alright in the 1970s.


WUTHERING HEIGHTS, ITV ENCORE, 9pm

SURELY every period novel has been made into several costume dramas and Hollywood films, and we all know what the essential ingredients are: bonnets, blushes and gentlemen. Wuthering Heights contains none of those, being a harsh and brutal story. It’s set in the eighteenth century, and so it’s officially a “period drama” but that’s where the similarities end; there is no mistaking this for soppy Jane Austen nonsense.

Emily Bronte’s novel contains violence, rape and domestic abuse, and no-one is pretty or polite. In fact, thosewho may display genteel behaviours are soon shown to be weak and ridiculous, because you need harshness in your blood to survive on the moors.

This 2009 TV dramatisation stars Tom Hardy as the vengeful Heathcliff and Charlotte Riley as impetuous Cathy, and the two lovers bring havoc, misery and death to all and sundry unfortunate enough to be around them. Andrew Lincoln plays Edgar, Cathy’s soft husband, who has no idea what he is getting involved in when he asks her to marry him.

I say that it’s the greatest novel ever written and this version is a good attempt at capturing it on camera.


THE MAGIC SHOW STORY, ITV, 6.30pm

PRESENTED by twinkly-eyed Stephen Mulhern, who began his showbiz career as a Butlins Redcoat doing card tricks, this programme celebrates television magic, and traces its development from the bow-tied magicians of the black-and-white 1930s through to the weird physical stunts of David Blaine.

Mulhern begins by paying a visit to Paul Daniels and asking him about his career. Daniels started in smoky working men’s clubs in Newcastle before becoming the king of Saturday night TV in the 80s as he became the first person to bring magic to prime-time TV. It wasn’t all smiles at the BBC, though, as Daniels recounts a Hallowe’en stunt he pulled involving an Iron Maiden, which supposedly clanged shut on him, bringing the programme to a hurried end. Thousands of viewers rang the BBC, half to check if he was alive and the other half to complain that he’d terrified them.

There is also a poignant tribute to Tommy Cooper, and Mulhern meets Cooper’s old comedy partner, Barry Cryer, to discuss his status as the funniest man who ever appeared on TV. We then look at the different style brought by American magicians to the format, and there are interviews with Penn and Teller.


Sunday

THE GLASGOW GIRLS’ STORIES, BBC2, 6.30pm THERE is constant ill-feeling towards Roma immigrants in Britain. Nigel Farage did his best to capitalise on it during the General Election campaign, and now that the election has died down there is yet more negativity in the news, this time courtesy of the charming Iain Duncan Smith who alleges Roma are selling the Big Issue in order to cheat our benevolent welfare state – the one he’s currently destroying.

The hostility never ends, so it will gladden some hearts to see a repeat of The Glasgow Girls’ Stories. This is a documentary following a group of 15-year-olds from Drumchapel High School who started a campaign to save their friend, Agnesa Murselaj. Agnesa and her family arrived in Scotland from Kosovo, saying their lives were at risk in their homeland due to their Roma ethnicity. Nonetheless, they were seized in a dawn raid in 2005 and taken to a detention centre. The Glasgow Girls decided to fight back and prevent their deportation. They got Agnesa’s story into the papers and TV and to Holyrood, and also inspired a drama and a musical, and finally saw Agnesa brought back home. This programme catches up with girls 10 years on to see where they are now.

JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORRELL, BBC2, 9pm

POOR Lady Pole, sinking further into weirdness and tousled, messy hair. What is to be done with her? Not much, it seems, because we’re told magic cannot cure madness. “She was not mad before the magic,” pleads Arabella. “Because she was dead, madam!” snaps Sir Walter.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Strange lands in Lisbon amidst burly soldiers and manic preparations for war, and is feeling rather intimidated. He struggles through the macho crowd, asking politely where one might find the Duke of Wellington. No-one is impressed when he introduces himself as the magician, least of all the surly Wellington, to whom he gushes, “I’m Strange!” The Duke demands to know what help a silly magician can be to his army.

Can you provide guns and ammunition, he demands? Jonathan can only whimper that he cannot, though he can make it rain. It seems it’s hard to impress the Duke of Wellington. Maybe that’s why we keep trying to show off by balancing traffic cones on his head.

NATURE’S GREAT EVENTS, BBC4, 9pm WE’RE told global warming could mean a tiny shift in our average temperature and so we shrug it off, especially some of us in Scotland who joke a rise in temperature would be quite nice thank you, but this programme, presented by David Attenborough, takes us to the Arctic to hint at how utterly catastrophic global warming could be. If the ice of the Arctic melts away it would be a disaster for some of the animals who live there.

Attenborough shows us what happens during a normal summer “melt” and so we’re forced to acknowledge what would happen if the ice shrunk back one summer and never re-formed.

In summer, the ice melts to reveal three million square miles of ocean and land which then becomes open for animals and birds to move and hunt in. We see Arctic foxes, beluga whales, narwhals and various seabirds who’re having a splendid time with this suddenly uncovered space, but the polar bears struggle.

They hunt on ice and live in a state of threat when it melts away. The programme shows us how everything is intimately connected to everything else. Something as simple and abundant as ice can mean life or death for some.

ASCENSION, SKY1, 10pm THE media is forever using hyperbolic language. Papers might tell of a “crisis” in Europe when they simply mean men in suits couldn’t agree on the wording of a document. The news might flash that they have “breaking news”, only to reveal that some pop star has divorced some footballer.

Ascension is a drama which takes us back to when the news truly was reporting a crisis – that horrifying and tense period in the 60s when the world was perhaps about to blow itself up: The Cuban Missile Crisis. That awful time has been made into film and TV drama before, so this programme approaches it from a different angle.

This is a sci-fi drama where President Kennedy is sure the world is about to be destroyed (and the real-life Kennedy admitted there were good odds on that happening in 1963) so he sent 600 Americans off into space to colonise a new planet.

The drama takes place 50 years after the spacecraft set off, and the Americans are still on board, journeying out into the blackness. But someone has been murdered on the ship and the passengers are forced to suspect one another.