Would you stay in a Vegas glamp site?
JOHNNY Vegas’s career is a bit like waiting for a bus. You sit around for years, and then suddenly two shows come along at once. First off the rank was Johnny Vegas: Carry On Glamping (Channel 4, Wednesday), a series about sleeping over in buses, which proved that the comedian and actor should stop thinking that his showbusiness life is in reverse.
Or did it do the opposite? “I used to be cutting edge,” he told us as he waited to make an appearance, dressed as a lamb, on Keith Lemon’s dreadful ITV2 quiz Celebrity Juice. No surprise he appeared to be drinking heavily before he went on. Water, of course.
But what about Johnny’s bizarre reworking of On The Buses?
Initially, the timetable for completion needed a little nudge from my favourite bus station manager Blakey – “It’s made my day, that has…” – as the first and only bus actually turned up only five months later. From Malta.
One day in the future, he’s hoping at least six charabancs will occupy the North Yorkshire site; that’s if one of the West Country restorers he’s hired stops kicking the vintage motors that do turn up!
Johnny looked devastated, but his face went a deeper shade of grey when they said an inside-out restoration would cost another £15,000.
Or is it a case that if there’s a TV company filming a celebrity for a show it helps to inject a bit of drama? Do excuse my rampant cynicism but it all makes for good telly.
But who doesn’t want Vegas to succeed? He has a heart of gold and had such a wonderful relationship with his late mother Patricia, after whom his Maltese bus has been named. They had a priceless discussion about his faltering stage career – “I don’t like your stand-up, it’s filth!” What a shame they never toured together. They would have topped Jack Whitehall and his dad.
Patricia’s preferred performance style for Johnny was acting, so she would have adored him in Murder, We Hope (Gold, last night). This is a further incarnation of the comedy murder-mystery series, starring Vegas and Sian Gibson (Car Share). They’re now together as a couple and they’d like to get married but being private detectives appears to be getting in the way.
Sleuthing is also a work in progress, with Terry (Vegas) playing Casanova to an apparently wayward spouse at a car boot sale. Oh, the romance! Great for a laugh on a Saturday night.
Jane Horrocks is in a new sitcom. She
(BBC Two, knows what to do in one. Trollied (Sky One) did well, while Absolutely Fabulous (BBC One) raised the odd laugh. It’s hard to say which way Bloods (Sky One, Wednesday), will go but it does have a fantastic cast even if the writing is so consciously young it felt like a recurring nightmare on a yoof channel. But it also featured Mindhorn actor Julian Barratt and Lucy Punch from Motherland.
You may also have felt it was too soon to have a comedy about paramedics, who featured so strongly in the NHS effort over the past year. Well, not really. In a Covid ward, yes, but here they even managed a half-joke about it when Wendy (Horrocks) and
Getting The Builders In
Wednesday). Now bearing in mind we’re paying for this, just why do we need a show that’s part of life? What about, Getting
The Mowing Done or Washing The Dishes? This is not a TV show, unless you’re a daft commissioning
editor at the BBC.
her colleague Maleek (Samson Kayo) came across two hoaxers on an estate.
It goes almost without saying the whole thing was far from realistic. These crews are always rushed off their feet, but I’m prepared to go along for the ride. No need for resuscitation just yet.
On more serious matters, I can report that Duke, the wonderfully forlorn Irish wolfhound, has finally found his way back into Britain in the most stretched drama of the year, The Syndicate (BBC One, Tuesday).
In the final episode of this occasionally engaging Kay Mellor series, the canine star of the show returned to Leeds just as the lottery winners were buying their first flash motor car, meeting the press and, oh, having one winner’s father bumped off for killing her mum. I look forward to the next series when Duke is accused of driving the fatal hit-and-run car, and the other characters mount a Free The Syndicate One campaign.
Finally, there are only two words to say about the finale of Line Of Duty (BBC One, Sunday), Buckells… Really? The chump with the golf clubs in the boot of his car who looked like he’d struggle to even find the trunk is the fourth senior corrupt police officer called “H”? He looked as terrifying as a lager shandy on the 19th hole where I’m sure he spent most of his days due to his impressive physique.
Does the show deserve another series? The BBC will find it hard to let go. But without the great Ted Hastings? Jesus, Mary and Joseph... no.