James reviews Pointless on BBC1 and Waking the Dead on U&Drama.

Hello, I’m James Brook, and welcome to the thirty-second episode of ‘I Review Freeview.’ 

This is where I review upcoming Freeview programs. Go to IReviewFreeview.com to search, listen, or indeed read and/or comment on all my reviews. And if you want to see what I’ll be reviewing next time, visit the page ‘What’s up next.’ That’s IReviewFreeview - all one word - dot com. 

Well, that’s my usual intro done, but I ain’t finished yet! Wow.

First up: Big news! When possible, I’m going to add a ‘what’s up next’ section at the end of each podcast, starting with this one! Isn’t that the best thing you’ve heard since it stopped raining? (Ha!)

And secondly: it has been suggested I start using a rating system. Five stars for a good program, something like that. I dunno though: I have a feeling so crude a measurement wouldn’t really fit with my overall style. Let me know what you think.

On with the motley.

In this episode, I will review:

Pointless on BBC1 and

Waking the Dead on U&Drama. 

I usually avoid game shows in the same way, as a child, I avoided dumplings, semolina pudding and boiled cabbage. Somehow, you just know they’re bad for you. But then a day or so ago someone I trust said ‘Game shows are popular. You ought to review one.’ So, here we are, with Pointless. Even the name hints at wasted time. To balance this, a program possibly about zombies. Not sure.

By the way, the image for this episode was generated by a free AI image generator with the prompt:

A man with a megaphone is shouting at a coffin. Above is a giant question mark.

I’m surprised: there was more than one reasonable image. So I didn’t push my luck. Like trying to teach elephants to dance, I’ve learnt not to expect too much from free stuff.

Now, let’s begin.

Pointless on BBC1, Wednesday August 21, 5:15pm

Until now, I have never managed to watch ‘Pointless’ from start to finish. Mainly because A. It’s a game show, B. I can never get the answers, C. I’ve got better things to do, like finding the tortoise and D. The ghastly, staged and uninteresting chat and banter.

I like the concept of pointless, and if I’ve channel hopped into it, I always hang around a bit and have a stab at the answers, but the urbane presenters with their semi-scripted banter and routinely boring probing for personal anecdotes are too irritating. About five minutes is my limit.

In fact, the same applies to most game shows, which means, as a class, I’ve avoided them for years. But a commitment’s a promise one should keep, so, armed with a notepad, coffee and toast, I settle down to watch.

You never know, I’m an optimist: maybe things will be different this time around. (Huh!)

But - even with coffee and toast - 45 minutes seems a long, long sit. So much filler. I kept shouting ‘get on with it’ at the screen. If they edited it down to 20 minutes, even 15, or start with more contestants and had more rounds, it might even be worth watching. As I said, the idea’s fine. It’s the flabby and inflated structure that’s the problem. It doesn’t allow any pace. It’s like an old man walking to the pub: ever so often he has to sit down and admire the scenery. And when he gets there he orders his pint, sits in his favourite chair and nods off.

Oh! Here’s one thing I learnt: it seems the contestants are recycled up to 3 times, dropping out early if they win the prize. To me, having to try again smells of punishment. Like a sadistic gym teacher forcing runners to go round again if they’re not fast enough. (Oh!) No, I didn’t really mean that. That’s only what it would feel like to me. But then I’d never apply anyway, so the point is moot. I know many people would object if they took it off air and displayed a notice saying ‘don’t watch this, read a book instead,’ but I wouldn’t. 

It starts with 4 couples, who get pruned down to one. I’ve found the best way to get through this sort of thing is to pick one contestant (or couple in this case) and root for them. And if they get eliminated, pick another and so forth. It’s a way of keeping some sort of skin in the game. Like pretending to back a horse in the Grand National.

So I started by rooting for Ali and Tom, a mother and son combo from Shropshire, because …. well, because why not.

But they fell at the first fence. A selection of celebrities was shown, all of them sharing surnames with American presidents. I recognised Dwayne Johnson and Hugh Grant, but was struggling with the rest. Some were on tip of the tongue, lurking like sharks in the back of my memory, but most of them …. no idea.

Anyway, Tom had a bit of a guess and scored a hundred. Not great, considering the target is zero. Then, after they swapped round (momentarily dim the lights, roll of drums) Mountain climbing Ali did pretty well, but they’d scored by far the most points and on switching to the next round (dim the lights, roll of drums, pointless logo) all evidence of them had vanished. 

But - unlike Stalin’s Russia - presumably they’ll reappear next time to have another go.

Then - oh grief, more chat. Someone earnestly explained how you can layer fragrances. Really? How lovely to know. I decided not to root for anyone for the simple reason it all seemed too much effort.

Round 2 was Oscar winning films in Spanish. To clarify, this doesn’t mean Spanish films. What they did was translate the English titles into Spanish, and contestants had to guess what the film was. I expect Google translate was working overtime. One contestant had lived in Spain, and spoke Spanish. But she - as a good sport - picked ‘silence of the lambs,’ which even I recognised. ‘Silencio’ was a give-away. But the fragrance guy and his pal did worse, so bye-bye to them.

So, after yet more chat, it was time to boost the winnings pot by naming beaches in Devon. Oh, wonderful. (Poof!) When will it finish? 

It was all entirely relentless, and entirely forgettable.

We’re down to the head-to-head! Such excitement. Colourfully clothed Tilly and Sam won at a canter, their answers on circus skills and animal names missing body parts (sample: Striped MIL - - - EDE) putting them first at a canter.

So now they’d won a trophy and the chance to win 4 grand. But first, of course, even more chat. If you win the money, what are you going to do with it? Sam, dreaming big, said he’d take a sight-seeing trip to Oxford. Tilly didn’t look best pleased. A thought: has any quiz show contestant ever said if they won, the money would just vanish into the overdraught?

Whatever. But Tilly and Sam won the 4K by bizarrely knowing hunky aging action man Liam Neeson appeared in the TV series ‘Derry Girls,’ which was hardly intuitive, to say the least. Which is probably why they remembered it.

So, bing bang bong: all done and dusted, take five minutes everyone before rolling on the next set of contestants. 

It’s all very smooth and well organised. The hosts - the dead-eyed Alexander Armstrong and Josh Widdicombe with a mug labelled ‘CO-Host’ - are relaxed and seemingly not too bored, but the eyes are the give-away. Really, they’ve heard it all before. Time after time after time.

All in all, a production line game show slickly made and quickly forgotten, like bland ice cream eaten in the dark.

Series record? Nope. I’ll read a book instead.

BTW: MIL - - - EDE? it’s millipede, the missing body part being ‘lip’. Aren’t you glad to know that?

Now, time to move rapidly on to:

Waking the Dead (S 1 E 7: A Simple Sacrifice: Part 1) on U&Drama, Wednesday August 21, 11:20pm 

From the title, I was expecting zombies. Maybe a fun-filled romp, like the one a few years ago with humans chugging along on a canal boat while zombies stalked them on the shore. I can’t remember what it was called.

But anyway, ‘Waking the dead’ is nothing to do with zombies. Disappointingly, it’s not set in a dystopian future, or even Sweden, come to that.

Nope. It’s a perfectly decent, well scripted and Brit-built police procedural with lots of heartfelt conversations among consenting adults. No internal crisis is left unexplored, which slows things down a bit, but adds a rationale to why the characters behave as they do.

To make sure we all know what is going on, the police unit - headed up by detective superintendent Peter Boyd (a rumpled Trevor Eve) - is called the ‘cold case unit.’

Yep, they’re there to look at old cases, ferreting around like sniffer hounds in ancient clues, retired coppers and shed loads of mouldering evidence.

This one starts with a letter claiming to have evidence that the notorious Annie Keel - banged up 25 years ago for killing both her husband and a visiting child - is innocent, and there is proof. So the mill stones of retrospective justice are set grinding into motion, only slightly put off by the fact she confessed to both murders. And when asked again, restates her guilt.

Even so, they conclude - not sure why - that Annie Keel’s son (who was given a new identity) is under threat, so they need to find him. 

Like a drop of rain on a windscreen, the plot splits and splits again, shedding small dramas and sub-plots as it descends. 

All sorts of things are happening: the father of the murdered boy is increasingly deranged, and has one-sided conversations with him in a graveyard; the detective in charge of the original investigation is aggressively uncooperative; Annie Keel’s own son - now an adult with a wife and a child - doesn’t want to be found; and the criminal profiler struggles with computers (it’s set in the year 2000, she’s middle-aged but - oddly - treats a keyboard as if she’d never seen a typewriter in her life). 

We hop from one intense conversation to the next. To be honest, it’s tiring, all the bleeding hearts and emotions on display. Not only that, but Peter Boyd (chief copper, remember) has a bad back. Every so often he goes ‘Oh’ and clutches it.

Luckily, on a prison visit, he does that when interviewing Annie Keel. She promptly does a grab and heave as if he was a misaligned bag of spuds, and he’s better. (Ha!) Really? I suppose it was to show that underneath her murderous exterior, she’s really one of the good guys. Or maybe I missed the bit where she’d been a chiropractor. 

Like most murder/mysteries, to identify the murderer you need to ignore all the obvious suspects (which of course take up most of the police time) and start looking at the less prominent characters. Someone who’s there from the start, shows up on a more or less regular basis and has a completely legitimate and innocent connection to the victim. A postman say, or the local garage mechanic, or maybe a lollipop lady or doctor. Or - to reference back to Agatha Christie - the butler.

And, usually, the motive lies in the past. Old hates and injustices rise like bobbing mines, just waiting to explode. Boom!

And way too often there’s a manufactured finish, with bolted on tense, threatening excitement. Ne-naaing cop cars, requests for backup and last moment rescues. (Poof) Oh, it would be so refreshing if scriptwriters and producers didn’t feel it was obligatory to do this. 

Good old Agatha Christie seldom bothered. They’d all be gathered in the drawing room, the murderer would be revealed, in would come the police and the arrest would be made. The exposure of the villain is the dramatic climax. Whatever happens next is just a tidy-up.

But, to be honest, murder/mysteries sometimes end quietly. I’m sure they do. But right at this moment, off the top of my head, none come to mind. But I’m certain they exist.

Meantime, the plot has trundled on. Slowly, the usual suspects have eliminated themselves and, for a moment, they’re back to square one. Oh No! But then they recreate the murder room. Blood stained sheets! Scattered toys! This leads to flashbacks and new insights. It’s all very dramatic, but I’m not sure it really helped.

But - here’s the thing - this was a two parter, shown back-to-back. Which meant I could easily bail out at half time if I wanted to. But I didn’t. I’d guessed the murderer early on, even scribbled it in my little notebook. I wanted to know if I was right. So I sat through all the boring confessions and revelations and the more interesting forensic stuff just to see if I was correct.

Which I was. Hurrah! 

‘Waking the dead’ is a solid murder/mystery, bolted together with care and attention to detail. Too many intense conversations for my liking, but I’ll live. In my mental rating of brit TV police procedurals, it’s probably in the top twenty percent, which is some going. One day - if the demand is there - I’ll do a whole podcast special on them, naming names. (Ha!) Or maybe not.

I’ve even put it on series record. After all, I’m not young enough to always know who dunnit. 

And that convoluted misquote of Oscar Wilde concludes the reviews for this episode of ‘I Review Freeview.’

Don’t forget, contact me via email to contact@ireviewfreeview.com or through the website Ireviewfreeview.com where you can also click on the page ‘What’s up next.’ to see what programs I’ll be reviewing next time.

Or! As Promised! Listen on! A new section, forsooth!

Next time on IReviewFreeview, I will review:

Sharpe (S5 E1: Sharpe’s Revenge) on ITV4, Monday August 26, 6:45pm and

A Very British Murder with Lucy Worsley (The Golden Age) on U&Yesterday, Monday August 26, 9:00pm

So a bit of pure action/adventure/escapism set in the Napoleonic wars and, by way of contrast, a documentary maker who never lets relevance intrude into her passion for period dressing up. Both on Monday as I’m away the following weekend, and want have a chance of posting this episode before then.

Tootle-pip. Thank you for listening, and goodbye for now.