John Byrne checks out a new US drama about killer animals, a history of Saturday Night TV, a Cilla Black compilation, and the latest comic offering from the BBC.
Reviewed: Zoo (Sunday, Sky 1); The Saturday Night Story (Saturday, UTV Ireland); Cilla at the BBC (Sunday, BBC 4); Mountain Goats (Friday, BBC One)
Pilots can be incredibly misleading. I remember watching the first episode of The River, the 2012 paranormal/horror/found-footage drama starring Bruce Greenwood as an explorer looking for magic in the Amazon. It was amazing, but the second episode was poor. By episode four it was a disjointed mess, I wanted every character dead and the writers expelled from Los Angeles for life. Ever since then I've treaded carefully around pilots, but Zoo (Sunday, Sky 1) was so dull I was left stunned. How did this show get off the ground?
Trailer Time:
Beginning with a bit of 'whatifery', a voiceover wonders what would happen if the animal kingdom decided to turn the tables on humans and started to fight back. Based on the novel of the same name by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge, it stars former Mad Men actor James Wolk as Jackson Oz, a zoologist living in Africa and running a successful safari business. Well, until the animals got angry.
The first noted attack takes place in Los Angeles, as two pals are put upon by a pair of irate lions while peeing in a side street. Meanwhile, back in Africa, lions drag off Oz's best friend Abraham (Nonso Anozie) just as Jackson rescues French tourist Chloe (Nora Arnezeder), the lone survivor of a lion attack on a tour group.
Back in the USA, all this people-eating activity draws the attention of journalist Jamie Campbell (Kristen Connolly), who teams up with grumpy animal pathologist Mitch Morgan, played by Billy Burke, to find out the cause. I'd reckon the animals were just bored. I certainly was.
Much more fun was The Saturday Night Story (Saturday, UTV Ireland), although it had about as much depth as a puddle. A two-parter voiced by Stephen Mulhern, it leaned heavily on the ITV end of things, but that bias didn't prevent this first episode from rattling along and supplying as many laughs as the many memories it evoked.
Trailer Time:
Starting with the variety shows that mimicked what had been available to undiscerning theatre-goers since Victorian times, things went full colour and more democratic with the arrival of The Generation Game in the 1970s, where host Bruce Forsyth led families through a series of tasks that bounced between mere embarrassment and national humiliation.
ITV's Game for a Laugh took public involvement a stage further and was compared to 'someone letting off a hand grenade' by Jonathan Ross. Former co-hosts Matthew and Henry Kelly reunited to reminisce about the show, before a variety of talking heads praised various hidden camera series such as Beadle's About, as well as Ant and Dec's more recent celeb-fooling makeovers.
Dancing on TV has enjoyed quite a revival in recent years after decades of ridicule, so it was no surprise to see Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing on Ice get the royal treatment before the Five Greatest Dance Moments were recalled, with Riverdance at the Eurovision coming in behind Angela Rippon's legendary turn on the 1976 Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show.
The massively popular Baywatch was followed by the equally body-conscious Gladiators, two shows that almost define the 1990s. Everything about this show was huge, particularly when it came to the on-screen ego of its ultimate anti-hero, Wolf.
Now a 63-year-old, Michael Van Wijk runs gyms in New Zealand, and he joined former host Ulrika Jonsson, several other Gladiators, as well as referee John Anderson - who looks great for 83 - in the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham, where the show was recorded. Seeing those giant cotton buds again was quite a moment.
The Saturday Night Story was fun, and fluffy. Just like the shows it featured. Job done, really.
Someone who became a staple of Saturday night TV during the 1980s was Cilla Black, who presented the hugely successful Blind Date. But before she became British TV's favourite aunt, she was a singer of some repute and, up to the end, always regarded herself as a singer first rather than a TV personality.
Cilla at the BBC (Sunday, BBC4) captured a fair chunk of that time, opening with her appearance at the 1964 Royal Variety Performance, to a comedy spot with Dudley Moore on Not only . . . But Also. Her regularity on TV plus her homely Scouseness got the Beeb thinking and she landed her own show in 1968. Cilla ran until 1976 and its original theme, Step Inside Love, was written by a certain Paul McCartney.
Cilla with Marc Bolan:
In between songs there were clips of her wedding to Bobby Willis, several street reports with Joe Public (the women's lib one was particularly illuminating), but the best moment of all was a duet with Marc Bolan that surprisingly worked.
After several years in the wilderness Cilla Black relaunched herself with a spot on Wogan in 1983. Some suits over at ITV saw the show, liked the look of her, and before long she was presenting Surprise Surprise and Blind Date. The rest is TV history.
Finally, Mountain Goats (Friday, BBC One) is a new sitcom on the Beeb that's a quite a throwback to the 1970s, canned laughter and all. It's about a bunch of misfit Mountain Rescue volunteers in the Scottish Highlands who spend more time hanging around The Old Goat pub.
Trailer Time:
Glint-eyed Jimmy Chisholm plays Jimmy, a man who may or may not be a pyromaniac as he's just burned down his home and has nowhere to live. Sharon Rooney from My Mad Fat Diary is pub landlady Jules, clearly the busiest person in this tiny, thirsty community.
It's not terribly funny, but Mountain Goats has an energetic charm that's quite infectious. That alone must be both applauded and encouraged. A few more laughs wouldn't go amiss though.
John Byrne
