TV Preview: You Have Been Watching

Every now and then we like to catch a virus just to mix things up a bit and remind our immune system that it still has a role to play in our continuing existence.

To keep things interesting, given that it is summer; we decided to go with the common cold. As males we know how devastating this can be, with days of unrelenting torment and an extra 15 minutes added to getting up rituals spent futilely pumping enough drugs and various homeopathic remedies into our bodies until we feel we can connect with the outside world. Keep reading.

TV Preview: The Take

Can you imagine an East End gangster drama which doesn’t star Danny Dyer? Moreover, can you imagine one which wasn’t directed by Guy Richie?

It isn’t an easy concept to fathom; god knows sometimes we don’t want to. Unfortunately it isn’t our choice; Sky 1 is forcing us to picture such an idea because of their new 1980s 4-part drama The Take, starting tomorrow. Keep reading.

TV Review: Hope Springs

In the early 20th Century, the Suffragette movement fought and campaigned to give women independence and the vote, but what has modern woman done with this privilege?

They’ve made Hope Springs, what a waste.

The opening scenes draw heavily from Hustle, and any prison based drama you can think of. Throughout proceedings the viewer is reminded of the sanctity of sisterhood, sisters doing it for themselves, female empowerment, bra burning, and some other related cliché. Keep reading.

TV Review: Reggie Perrin

Writer Simon Nye and Martin Clunes have teamed up again to present this remake of the much revered Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin starring Leonard Rossiter.

If you listen carefully you might just be able to hear him turning in his grave, assuming he wasn’t cremated of course. Who knows. Keep reading.

TV Review: All the Small Things

You might think that creating a TV programme off the back of a song by a guitar-based pop group was a bad idea, and you’d be right, mostly.
All the Small Things won us over quite early on with a choral rendition of Bond theme Nobody Does It Better. It is a shame that the rest of ATST didn’t quite live up to the high bar they’d set themselves.
Keep reading

TV Review: The Apprentice S5 Ep1

We’re the best there is, ever was, and ever will be. In fact, we’re the Jesus of business and we’d kill every child ever used on a Huggies or Andrex advert to win, the cuter the deader.
That’s right, The Apprentice is back! Just in time too, as we need something to fill in the time between series of Dancing on Ice.
Keep reading

TV Review: Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle

Stewart Lee is to the world of comedy what pans are to a chef; pretty vital unless you want cold beans, and nobody wants cold beans.
This man possesses razor sharp comic timing; somehow he can make any innocuous word comical. One small inflection or miniscule tweak of his expression conveys more than any amount of high pitched puerile drivel from the crosseyed one from Mock the Week or pretty much anyone from BBC Three.
Keep reading

TV Review: Moving Wallpaper

The Moving Wallpaper/Echo Beach concept was unusual for ITV, it was quite innovative and possibly even a teeny bit good.
Worry not however, as they weren’t going to allow this anomaly to continue unfettered.

If the phenomenon of the original format passed you by, here is a quick recap. Moving Wallpaper and Echo Beach were shown back to back. The former was a knowing parody of a TV production office which was creating a beach-based soap aptly called Echo Beach.
Keep reading

TV Review: Red Riding: 1974

It isn’t in our nature here at hecklerspray to be complimentary about TV shows, films, actors, or anyone or anything come to think of it, but this is a well deserved exception.
The first film in the trilogy of screen adaptations is set in 1974 and follows the story of a young journalist returning to his native West Yorkshire.
Keep reading

TV Review: Law & Order: UK

Michael Barrymore, Les Dennis, Shane Richie, Keith Chegwin, Bobby Davro, Bradley Walsh. What do they all have in common?
Their very mention triggers a feeling of drowning in depression? They’re cheap, tacky, polyester-suited, out dated Bognor Regis seafront entertainers? They are people who should never appear on television unless they are being pumped full of dry rice then offered a glass of water? Yes. Those things are all true.
Keep reading

TV Review: Big Chef Takes On Little Chef

This three-part miniseries charts chemistry set chef Heston Blumenthal’s appointment to revive moribund restaurant chain Little Chef with his unique inimitable brand of weird food.

Essentially it is a cross between Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and one of Jamie Oliver’s ‘only I can save Britain’ missions. Keep reading.

TV Review: Shooting Stars

In an age of the unwanted comeback (hello Take That, Boyzone and Peter Mandelson) those bods at TV HQ have finally bought back something we’d been greatly anticipating - Shooting Stars.

The all new anniversary edition was preceded by Shooting Stars: The Inside Story, a mockumentary of sorts which mixed backstage characters portrayed by Vic & Bob and previous guests. Keep reading.

TV Review: Lily Allen & Friends

“I don't know what's sicker, animals having sex or you clapping.”

Only Lily Allen and her friends at the BBC could command such an exclamation from Cuba Gooding Jr. Her tasteless attempt at a new chat show can be best described as Heat magazine crossbred with a little Graham Norton-esque audience participation. It was actually painful to sit through Allen’s new vehicle, paper-cut painful. Keep reading.

TV Review: Doctor Who - Voyage of the Damned, Christmas Special

It was once said that everybody is doing a brand new dance now, and that we should perform said dance, known as the locomotion. It was Kylie Minogue who made that statement, and it just so happens that she also starred in this year’s epic Doctor Who special as a delightfully downtrodden waitress.

The fact that ‘downtrodden’ almost rhymes with ‘wooden’ isn’t just a coincidence; Kylie’s performance was lacking in parts, but fortunately that didn’t detract from the overall enjoyment. The special was set on board the spaceship Titanic and, you guessed it, something went wrong. Keep reading.

TV Review: Spooks s6 Ep10

Last night saw the finale of the ever-fantastical BBC spy series, Spooks. If you’ve never seen it before, it is about a group of egotistical clerical officers who take themselves far too seriously, and snoop on baddies from largely non-Christian countries.

In this week’s episode the Israelis airstrike a school located on the Gaza Strip, and while it isn’t really clear why that happened or why it involves the British, it just does. Events do seem to be created on the hoof in this episodic window on the fictional offices of MI5. For instance, the Venezuelans of all people randomly sent a coded message to our boys via the medium of Beethoven’s 7th. Keep reading.

I say potato, you say?

You have successfully arrived at the second vegetable review. This one charts the experience of eating a jacket potato.

If you gaze to the right of your internet visualiser you'll see the potato starts off as a sort of mutant, the inners trying to escape by means of those ugly yellow tentacles. Before it crawled off I was able to pin it down and remove the tentacle/leg appendages it had spawned. Be warned! This should only be carried out if you have the correct protective apparatus. I did, so I was alright.

Not many things scare me in this world, but standing proudly among Iggy Pop's chest, Lorne Spicer, and Watford Gap services is the part grown potato.

Potatoes are often famed for their healing properties, they can heal an Island of it's inhabitants simply by not growing. The black potato which is indigenous to Chester-le-Street has been known to cure Monkhouse's disease, and can also cure breathing if taken in the correct dose.

It is exactly 5041 days since the final festival of the potato, or Potatoalia, to use the correct Gaelic name. Yorkshire was lucky enough to be the last host of this popular event where many of our northern cousins would go to worship mestre da batata, which roughly translates as the 'Potato Master'.

Many of you will also remember Danny of popular rock/punk ensemble "Heard'Sayers" was in fact a King Edward potato. Producers recently said that a vegetable band member was cutting edge at the time, but now everyone does it. They went on to explain that a potato was chosen merely because it can hold a falsetto better than broccoli, "it just does."

Nine minutes and a lot of reminiscing later, my big potato was cooked. There was some disagreement while in the microwave as to whether it should remain still, or rock from side to side. It decided on the latter much to my alarm. Again, on the right of your glass peering square is the finished product. The smell was literally half as good as it looks.

The potato you see in the picture is untainted, but it is possible to add toppings, such is the infinitely versatile nature of the ever talented potato. These vary from cheese and baked beans to the more familiar chocolate sauce and vodka dressing those who reside in parts of Essex enjoy.

So behold the humble potato, a vegetable with more wit than a similarly dressed foul-mouthed TV chef yet full of humility and wisdom.

7 Carrot Gold

This is the beginning of a new selection of reviews based upon the range of vegetables available to me in my kitchen.

Today is the humble Morrisons frozen baby carrot. That is it there, before cooking. The green bit is added goodness I imagine.

After two minutes of boiling in pasta water, and a further couple of minutes simmering in chopped tomato juice I guessed they were ready to eat.

Everyone knows that carrots are the vegetable of the adventurous, the baby variety even more so. Twenty times more powerful than a green bean, they are renowned as the vegetable of Dr. Indiana Jones himself.

Perhaps less well known is the fact that carrots are only second to chinchillas in anti-taste. Anti-taste of course being the phenomenon of removing whatever flavour present in your mouth for the next 11 hours.

The carrots experienced for the purpose of this review were not crispy, but crunchy. Crispiness is easily defined as biting into a leaf of iceberg lettuce, or the first break in a stick of fresh celery. That's fine; but what about crunchiness? A biscuit is crunchy, as are Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes, but there is the subtle crunch you find in tough but brittle foods, such as plates, and the raw carrot stick.
The baby carrots were actually neither of these, forget what was said earlier.

Tooth passage was not altogether easy, resistance was in its plural form and sometimes hard going. Even swapping to the sharpest teeth in the fleet did not fully eradicate the problem.

With the battle behind, the carrot can languish on the tongue. A slightly watery taste presented itself, which might suggest a lack of proper draining after cooking.
However, fault on the part of the chef is impossible.

Swallowing was effortless after sufficient chewing, which was about a 4.8 on the scale. That said, they were quite chewy, around a 6.

In defence of the sods, they were faultlessly orange and provided excellent dinnertime repartee.

More suitable as guests than food, Morrison's Carrots are a constant disappointment and are about as satisfying as windchimes.