The main problem with being a TV critic, I’ve noticed over the years, is that you have to watch so much TV. It’s not that I’m against it in principle: I like my evening’s televisual soma as much as the next shattered wage slave with no life. But the reality is that you end up doing stuff like I found myself doing on this Monday night just gone — cringing at pert male arses heaving up and down in a sensitive gay love scene in some moody new BBC spy drama that is going to be occupying our screens for the next five weeks.
Why? I find straight sex enough of an embarrassment but watching two men going at it — even pretty ones like the stars of London Spy (BBC1, Mondays) Ben Whishaw and Edward Holcroft — really is an ordeal too far, especially when, as a viewer, you’re clearly expected to find it all languorously romantic and lovely, whereas what you’re actually thinking is: c’mon, you’re a spy series, so let’s have less shagging and more intrigue and killing.
Luckily, the first episode ended happily. The handsome but incredibly dull and taciturn lover ended up zipped into a bag, just like that real spy who, it is now suspected, was bumped off by the Russians. How did he get there? Don’t care, don’t care! I refuse to endure any more of this brooding turgidity, a shame though it might be not to catch more of Jim Broadbent doing his twinkly turn as a wise old queen with an air of Smiley-esque inscrutability.
The Great British Pottery Throw Down (BBC2, Tuesdays) is proving to be a much safer bet. Clearly it wants to be the new Bake Off — and it is the new Bake Off, with Radio 2 DJ Sara Cox doing the jaunty banter à la Mel and Sue, and a couple of potheads (or whatever you call clay experts) standing in for Paul and Mary.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in