TV Review

John Bishop’s Britain

Saturday BBC1 9pm
First in the series.
Oh Bishop, Bishop, Bishop. I was thoroughly looking forward to this airing, as I hoped being on primetime on a Saturday night Bishop would ditch his usual style and veer towards the unisex audience. However it seems he’s unable to talk about anything but his own penis.
He didn’t deviate from his usual dog on heat patter as he spent the show reminding us that 18 year marriages are as stale as WW2 bread and each partner reaches a point where they constantly look for new conquests whilst navigating the sanctimony of their marriage vows.
Yet, the more Bishop regaled us with tales of women more attractive than his wife, the more I was reminded of the bragging boy at school that was all mouth and no trousers. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bishop was an insecure puppy dog in his own home, with a model wife that is constantly fending off admirers as he sits in his hotel room with his hands down his pants and flicks through the adult channels trying to cure his erectile dysfunction.
It seems a shame that to boost his image he has to adopt a persona of a coming of age pubescent boy, but then maybe this is his target audience.
When Bishop gave his Liverpudlian testosterone a break and discussed topics all sexes could relate to, his patter was hilarious. We all remember giving or receiving tapes from admirers as teens, with one song cut short as another began. It’s the soul reason I can never listen to REM’s “Everybody Hurts” without feeling slightly sick.
He went on to claim that our first record purchase dictates our fashion sense for the rest of our lives. He may have a little of a point here, however in my case, I’d be constantly dressed as a Womble! This would be quite fantastic if it meant I could recycle enough to save jumping up and down on the wheelie bin every week to squash the contents in!
His piece on Bono was inspired; his sketches aided his description as Bono dropped to his knees mid song to make his point about ending poverty. I empathised with the portrayal of a confused crowd as in uniform they all stared aghast at the interruption to their guilt free night out.
I did feel a little old as he reminisced about the erection section of a disco, until he pointed it out, I had absolutely no idea that this tradition had been broken. I would thoroughly expect a few slow songs at the end of the night in any nightclub, and I agree it’s a wonder how anyone ever pulls at the end of the night without this tool. Maybe that’s why Rohypnol has taken off?
All in all, a great comedian for the 25- 40 generation, if only he’d involve the females of the audience, and stop trying to prove that his tackle still works on a daily basis, he might be a little more popular.
There is a complete air about him, as he speaks though, that he’s stumbled on a lucky break and quite simply cannot believe his good fortune!

Richard Hammonds Journey to the Centre of the Planet
Tuesday 19 July 9pm BBC1
As the programme opened with Richard circling a huge Earth from a crane in an aeroplane hangar I couldn’t help but think that in his maturity he has decided to jump on the Brian Cox bandwagon. Cox has shown that science is sexy, and where the nineties fed our nature thirst with Attenborough’s wildlife shows, the noughties fed our curiosity with all things Jurassic, now it seems we all finally have an unquenchable desire to learn more about us, our planet, and natural occurrences that affect our everyday lives.
Richard Hammond is the watered down version of Cox, as he begins his presenting with a simple style that a nine year old student would be able to understand. He rarely travels deeper into the scientific jargon, staying safe as to not alienate the viewer. Most of us would have learned what he was trying to teach in a basic geography class; however our teachers didn’t have a giant spinning Earth to visualise their teachings.
Despite the basic science of the program there were inspired moments. As Florida’s divers navigated a dangerous underground path through the states aquifers, the Hamster with his Dora the Explorer Bob tracked their perilous journey on land by marking their destinations with huge red crucifix. A little pessimistic perhaps! It was a relief as they emerged through a pool in the woods.
Furthermore, whilst demonstrating how turtles use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate across the globe they fitted a baby turtle into a swimming costume that was more suited to the WWF of the wrestling kind!
Intentionally or not, Hammond revelled in an opportunity to show off his Wipe-out presenting skills when a mad scientist ventured to the lava pit of Mount Nyiragongo to collect a sample. A passer-by may have seen this as a quirky way to toast his marshmallows; however, nail biting tension ensued as the moon clad mad man took a sample of lava that was 800 degrees Celsius, and risked his life and his fabulous suit as the manic magma bubbled around him. The lava is thought to originate from deep within the earth’s core making it the speediest substance at sixty miles per hour. It really did seem like burnt toast for the man for a second.
Richard then travelled to Iceland and it seemed his journey had entered time travel mode, with the Marty McFly clone as our pilot, I kept looking around for Doc! Iceland seems to live a futuristic bubble of the ECO kind. The Icelandic people not only use a sustainable, natural source of steam to power their houses and even cook their food on the street, they also heat part of the sea to a cosy 19 degrees allowing year round swimming. The pavements and roads all so litter free look like a newly built set for Hollywood, and despite the temperature of the air, they are warm underfoot keeping them frost and slip free. Any Brit who spent the last winter using credit cards to scrape their windscreen and risking their life just to work a nine to five job in the compacted snow last year would not help but be absolutely awed, and envious of this achievement.
Essentially, this was easy viewing for a weeknight with a little extra education thrown in for good measure. The special effects were well executed but the real stars of the show were the natural phenomenon such as the Northern Lights, the lava pit of Mount Nyiragongo and the aquifers of Florida.
In summary: A lively documentary for the whole family.