WHAT A PERFORMANCE: PIONEERS OF POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT, BBC4, 9pm
WHAT did we do before TV? For a start, people like me wouldn’t have had a job and people in tracksuits wouldn’t have had easy access to DNA tests. So, was everything terrible before television?
Certainly not, says this new series. Presented by Frank Skinner, and Suzy Klein, it goes back in time to ask how the masses found their entertainment without TV.
The rich had their theatres, opera houses and musical concerts, but where did the noisy rabble go for their kicks? Their chief source of entertainment was the music hall which offered a pastiche of elegance, with its velvet curtains, brocade and lights, but the acts on stage were hardly refined: they were often loud and bawdy and the audiences adored them.
The most famous star from that era was Marie Lloyd, the singer, but we’re also told of Dan Leno, one of the first stand-up comedians, a man who counted Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel amongst his fans.
Skinner and Klein seem to have a great time in this series, dressing up as these famous performers and trying out their routines, the content of which might seem a bit silly or tame now, but that’s because TV has jaded us. Imagine how it seemed when you were just out of the factory after a 14 hour shift, having spent the day amongst clanking machinery trying to whip at your hair and nab your knuckles.
DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE, BBC1, 9pm
THIS is the last in the series so where will the hypochondriacs go now? Back to Google, where we’ve always been.
This has been a noble TV series: putting a nice, soothing GP in someone’s house for a week where he’ll listen to all their feeble complaints about non-existing or trivial illnesses, before pointing out eminently sensible and practical things.
I suspect the NHS backed the project completely, in the hope it’d help lessen the queues of dafties who’re at A+E with a sore throat or clamouring for a precious GP appointment because they’ve got a cold.
Just get to Boots and stop whining, malingerers!
But there’s a difference between fuss-pots and true hypochondriacs, and this programme won’t help the latter and probably won’t make a dent on the former. It might, however, provide some assurance and information for the nice mass of sensible people in the middle.
Tonight, the GP visits the D’Arcy family who have a love of fast food. Is this connected to the mother’s recent diagnosis of diabetes and, if so, are the rest of the family at risk?
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