James reviews Secret Crush on ITV2, Killer In My Village on Sky Mix, and The Kid (1921) on Sky Arts.

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

This is where I review Freeview programs. Go to IReviewFreeview.com to search, listen, or indeed read and/or comment on all my reviews, past and present. And it’s also available in the usual places where you get your podcasts. If one is missing, do let me know. And if you’re curious about the future, see the ‘What’s up next’ section at the end, or look for the ‘what’s up next’ page. That’s IReviewFreeview - all one word - dot com. 

In this episode, I will review:

Secret Crush (S 2 E 5) on ITV2, 

Killer In My Village (S 7 E 1: Freda Walker) on Sky Mix, and

The Kid (1921) on Sky Arts.

So, here we go for another eclectic mix: ‘Secret Crush’ which is a .. erm … game show? A reality program? In truth, I’m hoping for ‘dress to impress’ levels of mind-boggling ineptitude and fist in mouth embarrassment, but who knows? Plus, what appears to be a dramadoc about small town murders, so could be interesting. And, to finish, a silent, black and white Charlie Chaplin classic. How does that appear now, a 103 years later? 

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

In a mysterious English village, a tramp wearing a bowler hat is carrying a heart-shaped letter while a girl holding a knife looks on.

Yeah, I know: the tramp looks nothing like Charlie Chaplin. But I’ve found image creators don’t seem to like it when a named individual is used. I suspect they’re afraid of breaching copyright. So I tried things like ‘small tramp with a white face and bowler hat’ but ‘small’ was taken as ‘childlike’ and some results were creepy. So I quit while ahead. Well, sort of.

Onwards! Upwards!

Secret Crush (S 2 E 5) on ITV2, Thursday 26 September, 10:00am 

This is a reality dating show where crushees meet their crushers. Yep, I’m not sure who is who in that sentence either.

Wait: a REALITY DATING SHOW? All it needs is the word ‘celebrity’ to make me want to give up and die. But - as I hinted earlier, maybe it’s a gem. Another dress to impress. So, with little hope in my heart, I try to clear my mind of negative thinking and sit down, navigate to the recording, and watch.

Well, at least it’s not yet another dreary game show. I was thinking maybe it was a panel game, where a dustbin of Z list rejects is presented with a lineup of bashful looking types and have to guess who fancies who. Oh, what fun and games that would not be.

Nope, it’s far more straightforward than that. 

People with crushes have a date in a bar with the people they have a crush on.

Overseeing it all is the tremendously enthusiastic Verona Rose, who introduces herself as a ‘modern day cupid’.

First up is Megan, who is informed someone has a crush on her. Does she have any idea who it is?

Well, Megan replies, I’m hoping it’s the guy from the works dinner. She goes into the bar and waits. One is reminded of a doctor’s waiting room, but with a barman instead of a herpes poster.

Verona wheels in Megan’s secret admirer for a chat. It’s the scooter riding, talkative Moses, who tries valiantly to conceal his nerves by huffing and puffing out a beatbox routine. Verona is impressed, but then, that’s basically her job.

Moses gives a little back story: he and Megan work for the same company, and he once sat next to her at a works do and felt a vibe. 

Moses scoots off to the bar. A tense moment as Megan, clutching her drink, waits for him to appear. She confesses she’s all sweaty and nervous. Moses comes in and says (as per the script) ‘Megan, you are my secret crush.’

Megan is, quite literally, lost for words. They have a brief hug and sit. ‘How do you feel,’ he asks, ‘now you know it’s me?’

‘Relieved’ is the reply.

They seem to get along well, so let’s meet the next couple. Striding along the pavement is Kensington business student Marcus. He thinks he might be his cleaner’s object of desire: she’s been leaving love hearts on his bed.

He’s fond of the sweeping statement. ‘If it’s someone from my past ..’ he shakes his head ‘… then they’ll stay in the past.’ He goes into the bar and sits, leg jogging. You just know he’s anticipating rumpy-pumpy with the benefit of clean sheets afterwards.

Uh-ho, here comes, not his cleaner, but horse riding Polly, one of his home friendship group, who once kissed him, in - I have to point out - the past. This does not bode well for her. She seems nice. I cross my fingers.

When she says ‘Marcus, you are - obviously - my secret crush’, he replies with a disappointed, ‘Oh.. well, you look nice anyway.’

I think, what a self-regarding twat. An opinion only reinforced as the date trundles along its predictable, awkwardly sad course. But he does have the grace to - kind of - let her down gently, offering, perhaps, a date in the future. Or, he’s just letting her dangle on a piece of string. The program doesn’t seem to have a ‘three months later’ follow-up at the end, so we’ll never know. My feeling is, she’s probably still dangling, which is sad. You want to say, go away and marry someone with a moustache and a stable.

In this hour-long program, there are four couples. The format is as predictable as old cheese. We get a bit of back story, see the initial meeting and then cut between them, cherry picking interesting moments from their date. The barman - who is listed in the credits, by the way - fills the gaps by making some fancy boozeology examples.

Next up it’s Numair and Kiki Babs.

To me - a wrinkly crinkly baby boomer - they are the most interesting pairing. But then I don’t get out much. Kiki Babs is a drag queen, with eye lashes capable of opening doors, whereas Numair is a well trimmed scientist, used to talking fluent circumlocutionary balls. In the past, there was an incident between them with a massage table, frequently referred to, but - fortunately - never fully described.

They were friends before, and are still quite close. But she wants more. And, to start, you think he does too, but then, at great length, he talks himself out of it. They report back to Verona, saying things will remain the same, but you know they won’t. How can it be? They’ve been on TV: for the rest of time, bus conductors will give them a cheerful knowing wink.

The fourth and last couple make an appearance. Body building Josh has a crush on Eve, a school teacher who tells Verona - without prompting - that she dislikes body-builders and people running for buses. Look, I’m not making this up. 

Their date is doomed from the start. There’s a history between them of, one suspects, tears and slamming doors. They could be in Argentina. Her dislike of body-builders now seems perfectly rational: it’s all to do with him, and now he’s sat across from her, muscles bulging under his too-tight T-shirt.

She tells him she doesn’t want to be second to the gym.

To which this complete plonker says, ‘you can always come to the gym with me.’ Oh, has he got any idea about anything?

Needless to say, their date is short and goes no-where.

Back with Moses and Megan, they agree to go on a second date. Whoopee!

Overall, on the romantic front, it seems to be 1 win (Megan and Moses) a score draw (Numair and Kiki Babs) a no score draw (Marcus and Polly) and a loss (Eve and Josh).

I’m still trying to make up my mind about ‘Secret Crush.’ On the one hand, it’s a terrible, voyeuristic bit of unnecessary TV fluff; on the other it’s a terrible, voyeuristic bit of unnecessary TV fluff that keeps you entertained for an hour on a wet afternoon, so where’s the harm?

The only other dating shows I’ve seen - and reviewed - are ‘dress to Impress’ and ‘Naked Attraction.’ ‘Secret Crush’ lacks the charming ineptitude of the first and the jaw dropping bollocks of the second.

(Sigh) Oh, I don’t know: I wasn’t particularly entertained, and I certainly won’t be putting it on series record. There were just too many vulnerable, lonely people - on both sides - painfully putting it out there and painfully finding things were not as they hoped. And if that’s entertainment, give me Peppa pig anyday. It’s all over in five minutes and everyone ends up rolling on the floor laughing.

(Poof!)

Time, I think for:

Killer In My Village (S 7 E 1: Freda Walker) on Sky Mix, Thursday 26 September, 11:00pm

I chose to review this pretty much on the title alone, which I have found is often as good a way as any of getting something random. So, from ‘Killer’ I was expecting a corpse, and from ‘in my village,’ chintz curtains, a pond with frogs and a pub mentioned in the doomsday book. Agatha Christie does Countryfile.

But it wasn’t anything like that. ‘Killer in My Village’ was a bog standard, over-stretched documentary about a nasty murder in 2022, almost salacious in its repeated attention to the details of blood and injury.

I’ll say straight away: I didn’t enjoy it; I didn’t like it; I learnt nothing from it and cannot understand why it was ever made.

The bare facts are simple: in the small town of Shirebrook, an elderly couple is found beaten up in their home. The wife is dead, and the husband is barely alive.

When the police investigate, they find a shedload of forensic evidence, including DNA on a baseball cap. The suspect is quickly arrested and charged. A gambler, he was heavily in debt, and the couple had many thousands of pounds in cash, hidden in the house. They were tortured to reveal where it was. Most probably the husband - who had dementia - couldn’t, under extreme stress, remember where he’d hidden it.

A very, very nasty, violent and stupid crime.

And straightforward to solve. It was virtually game over once they’d found the DNA.

And there is the problem for this documentary. The substance is very very thin for an hour long program.

Think, for a moment, of any average fictional police procedural. Your Veras, Taggarts, Morses, etc etc. Even the ghastly Death in Paradise. There is a wide smorgasbord of clues, motives and suspects. Relentlessly, the police investigate, following the leads and eliminating persons of interest. Eventually the murderer is identified and there’s usually a concocted chase before arrest.

Have you ever seen one where, early on, a massive clue is found, the culprit arrested, and that’s it? Of course not: you need more meat for the dramatic sandwich.

And it’s the same here. A TV hour - even with commercial breaks and catchups after each one - is a long time to fill.

So you get repetition. At each stage the neighbours and friends are there, telling us how they feel, and what nice people the couple were; images of blood stains are repeatedly shown; the same aerial shots of the town pop up at regular intervals, as do street name plates and grainy CCTV images of the suspect’s car and of him walking in the area.

If it had been 30 minutes, it might have been fine, as a bit of TV. A tight little documentary about a nasty crime.

But even then, there are wider questions to ask. What was the point of it? Was it meant to be entertainment? If it was, then to my mind, it’s rather sick. Or maybe they thought of it as straightforward reportage, as if it was part of the news cycle. But that would have been done then, several years ago. There will be documentary evidence available: after all, this program was exactly that: a gathering up of the evidence, spiced up with some interviews. Or perhaps they thought it was educational? Don’t keep large sums of money in your house. If you do, this might happen. Oh, c’mon! 

It’s obvious why this program was made. Some enterprising person decided there was money to be made from making and selling hour long documentaries featuring murders in small towns. A researcher finds this one and puts it up for consideration. It looks fine, it’s accepted and money is spent on development. At some point, they discover the content is very thin, but by now it’s too late to pull the plug, so they go ahead anyway. I’ll bet someone - probably the producer, maybe the director - says something like ‘It’s OK. I know how to do filler. The punters won’t even see it.’

(Poof!)

Chance would be a fine thing.

But I’ll tell you one thing though. At the start of this review I said it was quote: ‘almost salacious in its repeated attention to the details of blood and injury.’

‘Salacious’ here is probably wrong, as it implies the intention was to titillate the baser instincts. Like driving past an accident and slowing down to gawp. Well, I don’t think that now, having written this review. It might have come over as salacious, but that’s only an inconvenient side effect of not having enough material to fill the time.

Everything was repeated, from pretty drone views downwards. Blood stains and other gruesome details, by virtue of what they are, do stay longer in your mind.

So I don’t think salacious was the intention, even if it was the effect.

I’m running out of things to say about this episode of ‘Killer in My Village.’ But it might be others in the series will have more substance, and thus resemble the fiction we’re all so familiar with. More clues, more suspects, a wider investigation, a more compelling narrative. But I won’t be watching. As far as I’m concerned, this train has left the station, and I’m on my bicycle, taking a more scenic route back to my normal viewing.

(Ha!) 

And with that overblown image, let’s move on to:

The Kid (1921) on Sky Arts, Friday 27 September, 2:00pm

It’s odd. When I first (in the 1950s) saw TV clips of silent films, they were all sped up. This could be funny when Charlie Chaplin was fighting a big brawling barroom bruiser, say, or being chased by an elephant, but any nuanced moments were completely lost.

So my mental image of Charlie Chaplin’s famous tramp character is of a grainy small person jerkily kicking a large man up the backside.

But obviously, over the years, technology has improved, and this version of ‘The Kid’ is at the correct speed and must look more or less as intended. It was the first ‘full length’ Chaplin film.

Just in case you weren’t sure, ‘full length’ here is in quotes: even with commercial breaks, the running time is a mere 70 minutes. 70 minutes! That’s only one hour ten! Your average Marvel superhero has only just discovered his/her superpowers by then, and still has to save the world.

But a lot does get packed into those 70 minutes. I think being economical with the storyline is probably a ruthless virtue of silent films. Complex plots need clarification, and without people explaining things to each other - and to us - that’s difficult.

So, anyway, ‘The Kid’ starts with an abandoned young Mother with a baby. There is a brief glimpse of the father, who has her ‘photo. When it is accidentally knocked into the fire, he rescues it, looks at it, then shrugs and throws it back, where it burns to ash.

The whole scene takes perhaps a minute, if that. But it neatly demonstrates how silent film makers were forced into keeping things simple. Story telling at its most basic. We now know he is not going to help: she is on her own, with a baby.

She is desparate, and places him on the back seat of an expensive car, hoping the rich owners will take care of him. She also leaves a note. But then the car is stolen and the baby abandoned by some dustbins.

All alone, heartbreakingly, it cries.

A passing tramp (Chaplin) picks him up and - I’m sure - in cinemas a hundred years ago, there would have been, at that point, a collective sigh of relief: we know Charlie: when push comes to shove, he’s resourceful and big-hearted. The baby will be OK. I have to say, sitting on my sofa, my feet up on a kitchen chair, I thought: good. The star’s here now: the film can really start.

And so it does: after a brief scene of domestic bliss, where the baby is kept quiet with a dangling kettle while Charlie makes nappies out of - I think - bedsheets, we jump to 5 years further on.

The baby is now ‘The Kid’ (Jackie Coogan). He’s sweet looking and cutely dressed in way too baggy cut down clothes; fleet of foot, he’s helping Charlie in his glazing business by throwing stones at windows and haring off. Then Charlie, carrying a pane of glass, would wander past and be hired to repair the damage. All a bit obvious, but they seem to be keeping their heads above water.

The film’s narrative arc is simple: there are quiet domestic scenes of the kid making pancakes, or Charlie checking him over for nits, interspersed with violent action: for instance, when the kid is taken away to an orphanage, Charlie races over the roof tops to rescue him. And of course there is more than one choreographed fight between Charlie and a far bigger opponent.

Meantime, the kid’s mum has improbably made good as an opera singer, and is now rich, but she has never forgotten her son. In one poignant scene, they are together, but don’t know who the other is.

I have to admit, by now, I was fully invested. Even the somewhat syrupy music (composed by Chaplin) sounded appropriate. I’d stopped expecting dialogue and the few captions seemed no more than a necessary adjunct to the action. 

And I speak as a person who has spent 50 or 60 years with moving images, on a screen, being readily available. So available, in fact that now, I can watch a movie while on a bus. 

Yet, here I am, watching a 100 year old silent film. I’m rooting for the good guys, and feel like booing the bad.

It is no wonder ‘The Kid’ was an instant hit, and is consistently regarded as one of the greatest silent films ever made.

Even though - towards the end - there is - to my eyes at least - an extended, bizarre sequence where Charlie falls asleep. A caption pops up: ‘dreamland’  

Everyone is now an angel, with cardboard wings covered in feathers. It is all happiness and dancing, but then some demons appear, whispering in ears and stirring up trouble. Soon, fights break out and heaven is spoilt. Quite literally, feathers fly. Charlie is assaulted and shaken. He wakes up back in the real world.

I did not understand this sequence. Maybe Chaplin - more used to making 15 minute shorts - had run out of ideas, and wanted to repeat some of his familiar chases and fights, this time with a bit of angelic flying. 

In short, it was filler.

Or, maybe it was more significant, a 100 years ago.

So I did what anyone would do, in this modern age. I asked AI, which seemed slightly offended I didn’t realise what it was all about. I was rather stuffily informed:

The dream sequence in The Kid is a significant and symbolic moment in the film. It represents The Tramp’s longing for a better life and his hope for a future where he and The Kid can be reunited and free from their hardships.

Well, that’s me told. And to think I thought it was filler. But now, it makes sense. Oh, the power of our future robot overlords.

I’d somehow missed that it occurred after the kid had been found by his mother and taken to her home. The tramp was alone. But, do not fear: one of the men shaking him awake is her chauffer. He drives the tramp back. The kid leaps into the tramp’s arms and they disappear through her big front door into a bright and happy future.

The end.

And, like all good films, it left me wanting a little bit more.

So, take my advice here. Put cynicism aside and watch this film. After all, virtue might be its own reward, but it sure helps when it delivers a cushy life. 

And that massive proverbial misquote concludes the reviews for this episode of ‘I Review Freeview.’

Next time, I will review:

Ludwig (S 1 E 2) on BBC1, Wednesday 2 October, 9:00pm

Anna Richardson: Love, Loss & Dementia on Channel 4, Wednesday 2 October, 10:00pm and

MAFS UK: It’s Official! With Chloe Burrows on E4. Thursday 3 October, 10:05pm

Well, here we go: an assortment picked quickly on the fly. I’d heard of Ludwig, even read a good review about it, so I thought I might as well shove in my critical ha’pence. I might even pick up Episode 1 from BBC iPlayer, although I’ve often found missing the first episode does not hinder enjoyment. And …. well … like most people my age I’m scared - no, terrified - of losing my marbles. In fact, this podcast is - along with regular walks, a fibre rich diet and moaning about global warming - an attempt to keep my brain active. And to finish, what is - are? - MAFS? No idea, so I thought I’d find out.

As ever, you can contact me via email to contact@IReviewFreeview.com or through the website IReviewFreeview.com, or from where you normally get your podcasts. Let me know what you think and - of course - if you want me to cast my beady eye on a particular program: film, documentary, whatever, then let me know.

And if you want to know what I’ll be reviewing next time, click on the page ‘What’s up next.’ 

Thank you for listening, and goodbye for now.