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One day in 1975 the Israeli cabinet found themselves being lectured on the most intractable political problem of our age — how to bring peace to the Middle East — by a peculiar white-haired British entertainer wearing a pink suit with short sleeves. His name? Jimmy Savile. That’s how he told it anyway. Remarkably, witnesses back up the generality if not the specifics of the anecdote. Savile indeed visited the Holy Land in 1975. And he did talk to the Israeli president Ephraim Katzir, saying (so he claimed): ‘I’m very disappointed because you’ve all forgotten how to be Jewish and that’s why everyone is taking you to the cleaners.’ Jimmy

Every now and then, you see a new series — Succession, say, or Chernobyl or To the Lake — which reminds you why you watch TV. The latest such joy is The White Lotus (Sky Atlantic), a darkly comic satirical drama created, written and directed by Mike White. White seems to be a curious and engaging character with lots of hinterland. His father used to be a speechwriter for ‘religious right’ preachers Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (and later came out as gay). He wrote the charming comedy School of Rock because, though not himself a rock fan, his friend Jack Black wanted an excuse to perform all his favourite

When the apocalypse comes, I want it to be scripted by a 1970s screenwriter. That’s my conclusion after watching the first few episodes of Terry Nation’s landmark 1975 ‘cosy catastrophe’ series Survivors on BritBox. Everything was so much more innocent and charming back then, including the end of the world. Survivors establishes its MacGuffin in the opening credits: a montage which begins with a masked, enigmatic oriental man in a laboratory where he accidentally smashes a vial; we then see clips of him in a suit travelling through various airports, with passport stamps (New York, London, etc) taunting us from the past with just how easy it was back then

Last Sunday on Channel 4, a man called Eric Nicoli proudly remembered ‘the bravest thing I’ve ever done’. In November 1975, Rowntree was poised to launch the Trek chocolate bar. The packaging was ready, along with an advertising campaign featuring, for some reason, potholers. But as the company’s new product manager, Eric couldn’t rid himself of the niggling feeling that Trek was boring. So — and this is the brave bit — he went to the boss and said that Rowntree should think again. ‘You better be bloody right, young man,’ the boss replied. And with that, Eric returned to the drawing board where he came up with the name

I’ve not been allowed anywhere near the TV remote control this week because of some kind of infernal sporting event taking place in Japan. You may gather that I have mixed feelings about the Olympics: on the one hand, I like most of the competitors, who are so much more affable and modest (those delightful Gadirova twins!) than the overpaid, overindulged prima donnas who recently took part in the Euros. Also, it’s impossible not to get sucked into the drama of individual stories such as that of Beth Schriever, the humble, underfunded former teaching assistant who took gold in the women’s BMX. But on the other, it’s bread and circuses

There was, you may remember, a time when Sunday night television was rather a jolly affair: gently plotted and full of rosy-cheeked yokels, twinkly coppers and warm-hearted patriarchs. Well, not any more — as BBC1’s Baptiste and ITV’s Professor T confirm. Both feature main characters, and quite a few supporting ones, with backstories so abidingly grim that you can only hope they don’t send out annual Christmas circulars. So it is that Julien Baptiste — French detective turned freelance missing-persons hunter — now has a dead daughter to go with his imprisoned son. Meanwhile, Cambridge academic Jasper Tempest’s OCD is clearly linked to the fact that, at the age of

How to Become a Tyrant (Netflix) is ideal history TV for Generation No Attention Span. Presented in six bite-sized chunks by Peter Dinklage, aka the ‘Imp’ Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones, it tells you most of the things you need to know about Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Gaddafi, Kim Il-Sung, Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein, without obliging you to think or grapple with any tedious detail. Instead of examining the dictators individually, it explores their careers thematically, looking for the ingredients they have in common. It’s split into half-hour episodes — ‘Seize Power’, ‘Crush Your Rivals’, ‘Reign Through Terror’, ‘Control the Truth’, ‘Create a New Society’, ‘Rule Forever’ — which

To its huge credit, ITV has managed to find perhaps the last two television celebrities who’ve never before been filmed travelling around Britain while exchanging light banter and using the word ‘iconic’ a lot. In Craig and Bruno’s Great British Road Trips, the Strictly judges are driving a Union flag-bedecked Mini through such telegenic staples of heart-warming TV dramas as the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales and the Scottish Highlands. For the opening episode, the choice fell on the Cornish coast, which certainly helped the programme achieve its primary aim of looking lovely. But this, as it transpired, was just as well — because for a fair amount of the

I’ve been trying to avoid the house TV room as much as possible recently because it tends to be occupied by family members watching Wimbledon and the Euros. My adamantine principles prevent me looking at either: I won’t watch Wimbledon because of the masks and socially distanced interviews and I refuse to watch any sport where the players all kneel before the match in homage to race-baiting Marxist separatists. So it came as a huge relief when Boy, finally home from uni, switched over to Rick and Morty. My immediate response was: ‘What is this noisy, in-your-face, in-joke young person’s crap you are inflicting on me, hateful progeny of mine.’

Ken Burns made his name in 1990 with The Civil War, the justly celebrated 11-and-a-half-hour documentary series that gave America’s proudly niche PBS channel the biggest ratings in its history. Since then, he’s tackled several other big American subjects like jazz, Prohibition and Vietnam; and all without ever changing his style. In contrast to, say, Adam Curtis (another ambitious film-maker whose methods have remained unchanged for 30 years), Burns’s documentaries take an almost defiantly considered approach, forgoing anything resembling self-regarding flashiness in favour of such old-school techniques as knowledgeable talking heads, careful chronology and straightforwardly appropriate visuals. Hemingway, his new six-parter being shown on BBC4, duly fails to mark a

Death of a Black Man is a little-known script from the 1970s written by Alfred Fagon who suffered a fatal heart attack in 1986, aged 49. It’s an intriguing but sloppily written play set in 1973 about a pair of black London teenagers who are hustling for cash in the music business and the furniture trade. Shakie has lucked his way into a Chelsea flat where he makes money flogging African chairs to gullible Americans. His best friend, Stumpie, needs a loan to bring a band of African drummers to the UK. Meanwhile Shakie’s ex-girlfriend, Jackie, has returned from Jamaica to sponge off him and enjoy the high life. Scriptwriting

Tragically it wasn’t my turn to review when Channel 5’s groundbreaking Anne Boleyn came out so you’ll never find out what my totally unpredictable critique might have said. As you know, I have previously been mad for all things Israeli and one of my plans had been to go there with my brother Dick and make a fun documentary where we train with the IDF, practise in one of those urban-warfare shooting ranges, learn krav maga, eat lots of Ottolenghi-type food, wallow in the Dead Sea, etc. But I’m afraid I’ve rather gone off Netanyahu’s vax tyranny and just can’t root for Israel in the way I once did. Still,