The casting was superb, which made everything else work. Darren Boyd in particular was spot on as John Cleese. Liberties were taken with events, people were stereotyped, but it all worked because it was all treated like a Monty Python production with all the post-modern breaking of the fourth wall that involves.

The show featured a couple of characters with speech impediments (always a feature of Python) and all the main female parts were played by men so it was absolutely in the Python spirit.

It was also good to be reminded just how far we have progressed in the last 30 years. I can remember that there really was that much fuss about what is, in reality, a very inoffensive film. OK, so we still have unelected bishops as part of our parliament and huge chunks of our taxes going to faith schools to prop up the churches, but at least there is debate about that now and you can complain about it without being seen as trying to bring about the end of civilisation.

It all made me feel like watching Brian again.

Terra Nova is likely to be a bit of a televisual guilty pleasure. It is fun to watch but utter nonsense, derivative in places, predictable in others and with scientific aspects you don’t want to think too hard about or you spend the whole hour picking it to pieces. So far I am managing not to dwell on why the dinosaurs seem to be bulletproof even with 22nd-Century weapons, how cars can be powered by a battery the size of an A4 box file, or why the moon looks 5 times bigger even though it was only a couple of hundred miles closer to the Earth 65 million years ago. As long as the annoying teenagers don’t get to be even more annoying I’ll stick with it.

Hidden is just a four-parter which I am finding watchable even if half the time I haven’t a clue what is going on. I felt the same way when I started watching the Red Riding programmes an ultimately enjoyed them. It helps that Philip Glenister is there playing a version of Gene Hunt which is always worth seeing.

I guess the problem with finding new programmes to watch is that you only seem to find out about them from trailers in other programmes. If you don’t watch other programmes except on V+ recording where you always skip through the ads and trailers it is a bit of a Catch-22. More or less the only time I watch TV live is Sky News so I loads of trailers for stuff on Sky Atlantic which we don’t get.

The list of ‘essential’ programmes that I have never seen grows every day (Sopranos, West Wing, the Wire, Battlestar Gallactica, Deadwood, Boardwalk Empire, 24, CSI… hell I haven’t even seen Peep Show) because I don’t like to jump into something halfway through or spend 18 hours with a box set catching up. Next time something starts up will somebody do me a favour and tip me off about it?

I think they should have a re-think and then scrap it instead because it has got a bit tired now. It was good when it started, but we have all had that behind-the-scenes look now and the novelty wore off ages ago. There are only so many times we can listen to somebody saying how difficult it is to act against a green screen, and how long they have to spend in make up getting their prosthetic head fitted, and now it is just full of gushing third assistant directors saying how exciting it all is to fetch tea while carrying a walkie-talkie.

The same applies to a lot of DVD extras for films, where there is no assumption made that we might have seen how similar effects were acheived many, many times before.

I just get confused by it all because I’m sure that when I was young all the effects were done with a blue screen. When did it change to green?

Some of the gadgets were extremely generic while others were very specific.  for example, the iPod counts, even though it is just one amongst many mp3 players – and not even the first to hit the market – but another gadget was “the record player” when it could just as easily been something iconic like the Linn sondek LP12, the Technics SL1200 or the Dansette. The same applies to something as vague as “the PDA” instead of picking the cream of the crop (Psion Series3) or “e-book readers” instead of the ever-tempting Kindle.

I’m also confused about where you draw the line between toys and gadgets. If a RC car counts as a gadget then why not a RC helicopter or the Corgi model of the James Bond aston Martin with the working ejector seat and other trimmings? Or why is the folding bike a gadget but not the bicycle generally – or the mini scooter?

I think if it was me I would have substituted MagLite for torch and zippo for lighter and I would have found some way to squeeze in the Leatherman somewhere, and the GorillaPod, and the USB stick, and… ooh, loads more.  But then isn’t one of the main purposes of such lists to generate a bit of controversy and conversation?

Most amusing was the slightly disapproving way Fry said that some people spend an average of four hours a day watching TV – in the middle of a three-hour programme.

Chrystal is down for a few days so she can visit Jayne in the hospital.  Being a student she arrived with the obligatory suitcase stuffed with laundry – its a tradition or an old charter or something.   She has also been totally bingeing on television.

She doesn’t have a TV up in London so is making the most of it for the duration and is devouring shows I have never heard of like an alcoholic who has found himself in a pub after six months in Saudi Arabia or a rescued Chilean miner let loose in a pie shop.  I just wonder how she knows about all these programmes.  I have a TV but I have never heard of most of them.

Yes there were some TOTP clips, but also quite a few songs from concerts shown on the BBC, a Royal Variety Show performance,  a guest spot on the Morecambe & Wise show, and so on, but it was also broken up by bits from interviews and non-musical guest appearances on Blue Peter, Parkinson, Wogan as well as clips from the news.  All it really needed was more Ray Cooper.

With all the interest in his hair, his civil partnership, his tantrums, and his lifestyle generally it is easy to forget just how good he is at his job and how good he was at his best, when he knocked out 9 great albums in 6 years.  More amazing is how he seems to have hit that sort of form, albeit at a slower pace, with his last four albums.  He may be an official national treasure, but he’s still a top-class songwriter, musician and entertainer in my humble opinion.

After that I moved onto last week’s episodes.  I’ll admit I skipped through Fleet Foxes and kd Lang, though I did watch the rest:

Hugh Laurie was entertaining.  Maverick Strike was disconcerting because the singer looks like Mike Skinner but sounds like Finlay Quaye.  After getting over that confusion I really enjoyed their sound.  The Agitator was very good, though I suspect the format only works in short bursts, but the most enjoyable act for me was Vintage Trouble who I reckon would be a good band to see in a pub or club: lively, infectious and they really look like they are enjoying themselves.

While I was watching the backlog a new episode of the Tuesday live show was being recorded so I finished off by watching that – a very strong female line-up this week with Lykke Li, PJ Harvey and the Unthanks.  I’d already listened to the PJ Harvey album a few times on Spotify and bought the Lykke Li CD as soon as it came out and enjoyed both so there was no fast-forwarding going on for this one and I’m already looking forward to the full show on Friday.

Not too excited about next week though: Adele and R Kelly…  still keeping my fingers crossed for Gang of Four, Beardyman, Human League or Keren Ann to pop up later in the series.   Be good to see Spizzenergi on there too, but I can’t see that happening so I’ll just have to pop up to Camden on June 11th and see them play with Department S.

I have decided that, like it or not, Save All Your Kisses For Me is a brilliant song and I can see why it won Eurovision – an extremely catchy song.

Even through all the musical nostalgia I found the sho to be a televisual equivalent of the palace at Versailles.  Just as the mere sight of the palace explains a lot about how and why the French revolution came about, a few minutes watching a 1976 TOTP explains a lot about why punk just had to happen.

All I knew about it was that it was another film from The Asylum, who made that truly awful Sherlock Holmes rip-off film, so I was expecting some something spectacularly bad, but this surpassed even those expectations.

To get some idea of scale of the badness, this is a small excerpt from Wikipedia’s plot summary:

The megapiranhas continue to move north, consuming two battleships and a nuclear submarine. They eventually reach south Florida, where they kill at least five Puerto Ricans on a beach and manage to blow up two hotels.

The IMDb has a page for ‘goofs’ where it lists continuity errors and other mistakes.  I think they ran out of steam on this film, or maybe the internet is just not big enough to list them all.  They listed some spectacular things like the mountains of Florida, the way the scientist manages to connect a small oxygen tank to power a helicopter when its fuel line was shot, or the presence of coral reefs at the bottom of a freshwater river, but still missed plenty.

My favourite bit was the idea that a nuclear submarine would have nuclear torpedos…

The biggest surprise was in the end credits, where it turned out that the middle-aged scientist with enormous breasts was actually Tiffany – yes; that Tiffany, the one who did I Think We’re Alone Now.

The thing is, I would thoroughly recommend watching this film, preferably in large groups where you can compete for spotting the biggest scientific errors, worst acting, or least special effects.   I have seen more realistic visual effects on home-made films on YouTube.   Some of them even made the efects in Blake’s Seven look sophisticated.  You haven’t lived until you have seen giant piranhas launching themselves out of the water to embed themselves seven stories up in a hotel wall.