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TV review: World Snooker Championship Final; Britain Beware; The King & the Playwright: A Jacobean History

Five kids meet horrible ends on a farm – you have got to laugh There were several years during the early 1980s when I’d give over every May Day bank holiday to watching the concluding frames of the World Snooker Championship Final (BBC2) on TV. There are a few million viewers who still do and I anticipate Ronnie O’Sullivan and Ali Carter gave them plenty of excitement, but somehow, a long time ago, the hypnotic effect of watching young men with a pallor that suggested they had yet to encounter daylight repetitively potting the same balls for hours – make ...

Veep season one, episode three: Catherine

Three episodes in and HBO have already commissioned a second series SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Veep on HBO. Don’t read on if you have not seen episode three of the series. Here are the reviews of previous episodes in this series. The vice president Selina Meyer is preparing for a party to celebrate her 20 years in Washington, but celebrations are marred by rumours of tension coming from the First Lady and by negotiations over the make-up of the “clean jobs task force” – specifically the oil industry’s desire to have a representative on the panel, ...

So Amanda, why did you watch that vile tape? | Barbara Ellen

The treatment of Tulisa over the ‘sex tape’ was cruel and unthinking It feels strange to be angry and disappointed in Amanda Holden. It feels like being let down by the tiny girl chalking on the blackboard on the old-fashioned test card. It feels like being angry at a sub-par bowl of Instant Whip. Amanda Holden sits on the panel of a tv talent show. She’s rather pretty and has always seemed quite sweet. Why on earth would anyone be angry or disappointed with her? Except that on Alan Carr: Chatty Man last week, Holden giggled about how she’d watched ...

TV review: Maestro at the Opera

Where has all the laughter disappeared to in the BBC’s upper-class X Factor? One of the TV comedy highlights of 2008 was Peter Snow, who states he adores classical music, attempting to conduct an orchestra. With a wild look in his eye and a maniacal grimace, he waved his arms about all over the place, beating two, then three, then maybe five. He demonstrated no talent or understanding for Prokofiev, whose Dance of the Knights he left not just dead but horrifically dismembered. It was a joy.

Review: Shakespeare in Italy; King of the Teds

Francesco makes absurd claims about Shakespeare in Italy. And that is fine by me The last time I wrote about Francesco da Mosto, he was presenting Francesco’s Mediterranean Voyage and I described him as “a Venetian count with a simian face, a shock of white hair and an accent that could make you pregnant by the end of the programme”. All that is still true, except that this time he is staying in Italy and speaking about Shakespeare and the art of love. Buckle up, ladies. It’s gonna be a dangerously smooth ride.

The Apprentice 2012 episode seven: live blog

This week the teams head to Essex to push products at markets and shopping centres. But will batting their falsies at the public win the challenge? Good evening, and welcome to The Apprentice Week 7 Liveblog! Tonight is the wholesale “smell what is selling” task – buying cheap tat and then selling it to the public, market trader-style. The point is to re-invest in the popular lines to maximise profits, but traditionally the teams always forget that bit. Look, they can only do one thing at a time, yeah? Last year this task yielded some comedy gems – remember Susan ...

Mad Men: season five, episode seven – At the Codfish ball

The Heinz deal comes to a head, Megan shows she is more than arm candy, and Sally sees more than she bargained for … SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for those who are watching season five of Mad Men on Sky Atlantic. Don’t read on if you have not seen episode seven Paul Macinnes’ episode six blog “I should be jealous but I look at you and I feel like I’m getting to experience my first time again. It’s a good day for me.” – Peggy Olsen to Megan Draper Megan Draper – An Apology.

Review: The 70s; Scott & Bailey; Silent Witness

More nostalgia-fest than social history, The 70s trod carefully around my past There’s something rather disconcerting about seeing my own life being replayed as history. Yet something extremely compulsive too, a curious mixture of both wanting to have my experience recorded and formally acknowledged and a desire for it to remain personal – untouchable and unclassifiable. Dominic Sandbrook’s social history of The 70s (BBC2) continues to manage the two things at the same time; which is both its strength and weakness.

Veep – episode two, Frozen Yoghurt

The first installment of the White House sitcom was slim pickings for laughs and this week’s offers less of the same SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Veep on HBO. Don’t read on if you have not seen episode two of the series. Here’s the review of episode one Washington DC is beset by hot weather and an outbreak of a particularly violent gastric flu virus. Amidst it, vice-president Selina Meyer works to advance her “clean jobs taskforce” and a bill reforming the US Senate’s voting procedures.

A room of my own: Olivia Williams

The living room of the actor’s central London flat is an oasis of calm Olivia Williams is a London girl, which is fitting for someone who we will next see playing a mayoral candidate in the TV play City Hall, written by her husband, the actor and playwright Rhashan Stone. Growing up in Camden, she used to pass through Marylebone, where she now lives with Stone and their two daughters, on her way to Saturday-morning ballet class; she originally thought this flat would be her “bachelorette pad… my happy acceptance of permanent singledom”.