Channel 4

Monday

Sebastian Payne

Watch: Jeremy Corbyn’s cantankerous interview on his ‘friends’ in Hamas

Jeremy Corbyn is finally receiving the scrutiny he deserves. On Channel 4 News this evening, the hard-left Labour leader hopeful was quizzed by Krishnan Guru-Murthy on comments about engaging with 'friends'  in Hamas and Hezbollah over the Middle East conflict. Corbyn refused to apologise for using the word 'friends' and snapped several times at Guru-Murthy for not letting him finish a long-winded answer: 'I'm saying that people I talk to, I use it in a collective way, saying our friends are prepared to talk. 'Does it mean I agree with Hamas and what it does? No. Does it mean I agree with Hezbollah and what they do? No. What it means is that I think to bring about a peace process, you have to talk to people with whom you may profoundly disagree.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Amanda Platell is wrong: only Ch4 would have had the guts to screen Benefits Street

My Saturday morning would not be complete without Amanda Platell’s delicious put-downs in the Daily Mail, usually aimed at people who richly deserve them. But today she identifies a target that doesn’t. Her piece, “White Dee, and how the Left lost the war on welfare,” argues that Ch4 made Benefits Street to "provide a powerful argument for the deserving poor” but ended up awakening a nation to the abuses of welfare. She’s wrong: Ch4 knew what it was doing. And only Ch4 would have had the guts to do it. Benefits St was indeed a landmark in the debate; she’s right about that. But wrong to suggest that it somehow backfired on Ch4.

Thursday

James Delingpole

Behind the Black Flag curtain

So you’ve just popped out of town for the day on an errand. And when you get back, everyone has gone. Your wife, your kids, your nephews and nieces, your friends, your customers: they’ve all been kidnapped and dragged off to a place so barbarically horrible that really they’d be better off dead. Your daughter, for example. If she’s nine or over then she’s considered fair game. She’ll be sold as a slave in the market to the highest bidder — as ever, there’s a premium for blonde hair or blue eyes— after which her new owner can use her as she wishes. The very least she can expect is to have to spend her every day in the most restrictive clothing anywhere in the Muslim world.

Wednesday

Steerpike

Paul Mason calls Syriza critic a ‘Nazi collaborator’

Covering the Greece crisis appears to be beginning to take its toll on Paul Mason. Channel 4's economics editor became embroiled in a bizarre Twitter rant last night during which he accused an anonymous blogger of being a 'Nazi supporter' over their criticism of the Syriza government. The comments were made during a heated discussion between Mason and the blogger @GreekAnalyst. A tweet criticising the Syriza government's strategy appeared to rattle Mason, who appears to be unimpressed by Germany's negotiations with Greece following the referendum. Mason expressed his frustration by using a Greek word to insult the user, who runs an anonymous blog strongly opposing the Syriza government: https://twitter.

Thursday

James Walton

Bad robots

You’d think scientists might have realised by now that creating a race of super-robots is about as wise as opening a dinosaur park. Yet in Channel 4’s new sci-fi series Humans (Sunday), the manufacturers of the extremely lifelike cyber-servants known as ‘synths’ were weirdly confident that nothing could go wrong. Nor did it cross their minds that the synths — programmed only to do whatever their owners told them — could possibly develop their own thoughts and emotions... Still, if its premise is almost heroically unoriginal, Humans does look as if it’ll be giving the social, scientific and philosophical implications of advanced artificial intelligence an impressively thorough airing.

Tuesday

A.S.H. Smyth

What Afghan soldiers really think – the same as us

‘The NATO Commander in Eastern Afghanistan has said that this year 54 foreign bases have already been closed...’ Last December Channel 4 aired a documentary entitled Billion Dollar Base: Deconstructing Camp Bastion, the predominating ‘takeaways’ from which were a) what phenomenal amounts of money we’d spent on our eight-year operation in and around Helmand Province, and b) how unimpressed the Afghan brass were by what ‘little’ we were leaving behind. I found myself watching most of it through gritted teeth; but it was hard, nevertheless, not to have some sympathy for the incoming Afghan soldiery. A new documentary film has now taken up that very story. Tell Spring Not to Come This Year (dir.

Friday

Lloyd Evans

Channel 4’s The Vote reviewed: ‘complex, acute, very funny and oddly moving’

He’s back on top form. James Graham has taken the unlikeliest setting, a polling station during the last hour of a general election, and turned it into a beautifully crafted comedy drama. The Vote at the Donmar was broadcast on Channel 4 last night at 8.30 p.m. We’re in a knife-edge London marginal constituency where a polling blunder has been uncovered. A wizened pensioner voted twice by accident. Once in his brother’s name, once in his own. Panic stations. Democracy is threatened. Kirsty, an excitable teller, tries to even up the score by persuading a relative who hasn’t voted to cast his ballot under her discreet direction. This he does. But he votes for the wrong party. Now two extra votes are needed.

Thursday

Steerpike

Why E4’s election stunt may not stand the test of time

Today Channel 4's sister channel E4 has made the bold decision to halt broadcasting any programmes until this evening in a bid to encourage their viewers to vote. The channel, which is aimed at youths between the ages of 16-24, will instead broadcast a cartoon of a purple creature asking viewers to get off the sofa and vote because 'there is nothing more important than democracy and Hollyoaks'. Happily, the broadcaster has managed to find a way to combine both democracy and their popular soap opera among their top priorities. Programmes will resume tonight at 7pm, just in time for Hollyoaks. In fact, statistics by Barb show that all the channel's most popular programmes begin after 7pm.

James Walton

Not much cop | 7 May 2015

With Clocking Off, Shameless and State of Play among his credits, Paul Abbott is undoubtedly one of the most respected TV writers in Britain. Not even his biggest fans, though, could argue that he’s one of the subtlest. On the whole, whatever his characters are thinking, they’ll also be saying — and generally in a way that proves what no-nonsense salt-of-the-earth types they are. Nor do his dramas ever suffer from a shortage of incident, much of it pitched somewhere between the bracing and the lurid. It’s an approach that Abbott evidently felt no need to change now that he’s writing a cop series. No Offence (Channel 4, Tuesday) began with DC Dinah Kowalska coming back in a taxi from a disappointing evening out with her boyfriend, who was on crutches.

Thursday

James Walton

Comics’ trip

Who says British television lacks imagination? You might have thought, for example, that every possible combination of comedian and travel programme had been exhausted long ago. After all, it’s now 26 years since Michael Palin set the trend by following in Phileas Fogg’s footsteps (sort of). In more recent times, we’ve had Stephen Fry going round America in a London taxi, Billy Connolly going round Australia on a Harley-Davidson trike and — perhaps drawing the short straw — Ade Edmondson going round Britain in a caravan. There’s also been Paul Merton in India, Sue Perkins in China, Sean Lock and Jon Richardson in the Deep South and... well, you get the idea.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Journalists jeered for asking Tony Blair questions at Labour press conference

Labour have continued their bizarre war on the media with aplomb. As Mr S has reported in the past, pesky journalists that have the audacity to ask awkward questions are given the full hairdryer treatment from the audience at Labour’s set piece events. Today’s speech by Tony Blair was no different: This Tony Blair event very nostalgic. A member of the audience even called me "Tory scum" for asking a question. — James Landale (@BBCJLandale) April 7, 2015 Modern trait of crowd booing journalists who ask the most relevant questions. Expect more of it to come. #Blair — Chris Gibson (@ChrisGibsonNews) April 7, 2015 All stirred up by the party’s chief press-slayer Tom Watson: Tony Blair speech on Europe.

Friday

Steerpike

Rupert Murdoch calls Ed Miliband out on his debate boast

Ed Miliband used last night's election interview with Jeremy Paxman as an opportunity to blast the Murdoch press. The Labour leader told viewers that he had stood up to Rupert Murdoch, and would continue to do so in spite of whatever bad publicity is thrown at him as a result. However, this appeared to come as news to Murdoch. The media mogul took to Twitter in a bid to set the record straight, claiming that the Labour leader only had gushing praise for him when they met the one time. Thanks for 2 mentions, Ed Miliband. Only met once for all of 2 minutes when you embarrassed me with over the top flattery. — Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) March 26, 2015 CCHQ seem to be on Murdoch's side.

Sebastian Payne

Listen: The Spectator’s verdict on the Cameron/Miliband Q&A

According to the snap polls, David Cameron was victorious in the first TV 'debate' — but Ed Miliband didn't do too badly either. In this View from 22 podcast special, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the televised Q&A session with Cameron and Miliband yesterday evening. Did the Labour leader exceed expectations? How did the Prime Minister cope with an interrogation from Jeremy Paxman, as well as questions from the audience? And what affect, if any, will the outcome have on the election campaign?

Thursday

Taki

Make no mistake: the Top Gear brouhaha is cultural warfare

It’s a famous quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald, one that Elton John should ponder (when he’s not out shopping, that is): ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.’ Mind you, Elton John is a hysterical, spoilt, ugly fat man who thinks his opinions count. (Perhaps they do with non-talents such as Liz Hurley and Victoria Beckham.) I now know who Dolce & Gabbana are because of the row over children conceived by IVF and surrogacy, and they seem like nice billionaires, except they threw in the towel right away and apologised.

James Forsyth

Despite Cameron’s win, Labour will be happy with Ed Miliband’s Q&A performance

David Cameron won tonight’s TV head to head with Ed Miliband according to an instant ICM poll. The poll for the Guardian gives the evening to Cameron 54-46. Though, it is worth noting that this 8 point margin is smaller than Cameron’s usual lead on the leadership question. Cameron started with a grilling from Jeremy Paxman, who pinned the Tory leader to the crease with a series of fast, hostile deliveries. Cameron just about kept the ball out. But he was visibly uncomfortable at points. However, there was no killer moment. Cameron was more comfortable with the questions from the audience and with them he repeatedly pivoted to the Tories’ key campaign message that you can only have more spending on public services with a strong economy.

Rod Liddle

How Ukip became the incredible disappearing party | 26 March 2015

The establishment drive to marginalise Ukip has been under way for three months now, and it has having its effect. You will not read anything about Ukip in your newspapers unless it is a negative story — some half-witted candidate’s office fraudulently claiming expenses, or a disappointed member explaining that they’re all vile people and so on. The papers have, by and large, cottoned on to the fact that Nigel Farage saying something a little gamey about race is not, actually, a negative story. Whenever the Ukip leader mused in moderate terms that he found it uncomfortable to sit on a train where he was the only person speaking English, the London media turned paroxysms of outrage and the Ukip vote dutifully went up a little.

James Walton

Channel 4’s The Coalition reviewed: heroically free of cynicism

In a late schedule change, Channel 4’s Coalition was shifted from Thursday to Saturday to make room for Jeremy Paxman interviewing the party leaders. With most dramas, that would mean I’d have to issue the sternest of spoiler alerts for anybody reading before the programme goes out. In this case, though, you know the story already — because Coalition was a dramatisation of what happened in Westminster in the days after the last general election. Fortunately, one of the programme’s many qualities was its Day of the Jackal ability to keep us gripped even though we were always aware of the outcome — largely by reminding us that the characters weren’t.

Rod Liddle

How Ukip became the incredible disappearing party

The establishment drive to marginalise Ukip has been under way for three months now, and it has having its effect. You will not read anything about Ukip in your newspapers unless it is a negative story — some half-witted candidate’s office fraudulently claiming expenses, or a disappointed member explaining that they’re all vile people and so on. The papers have, by and large, cottoned on to the fact that Nigel Farage saying something a little gamey about race is not, actually, a negative story. Whenever the Ukip leader mused in moderate terms that he found it uncomfortable to sit on a train where he was the only person speaking English, the London media turned paroxysms of outrage and the Ukip vote dutifully went up a little.

Thursday

Adam Sweeting

Raised by Wolves review: council-estate life but not as you know it

Journalist, novelist, broadcaster and figurehead of British feminism Caitlin Moran, who writes most of the Times and even had her Twitter feed included on a list of A-Level set texts, is now bidding to break into the sitcom business. Can one woman shoulder this ever-increasing multimedia load, along with the fawning tide of adulation that follows her everywhere? Wisely, she enlisted the help of her sister Caroline to create Raised By Wolves (Channel 4, Monday), a wily reimagining of their home-schooled childhood (alongside six siblings) on a Wolverhampton council estate. After a 2013 pilot, it’s back for a six-part series, with the hyperactive, motormouthed Germaine (the fictionalised Caitlin) played by Helen Monks and her caustic, intellectual sister Aretha by Alexa Davies.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Mark Gatiss: I based Sherlock’s Mycroft on Peter Mandelson

In the BBC's Sherlock, Mark Gatiss plays Sherlock Holmes's sly older brother Mycroft. Now the actor has revealed in an interview with the Radio Times that the person who inspired his performance is none other than Peter Mandelson. 'I based Mycroft on Peter Mandelson. It was explicit even before I was going to play him. Steven Moffat and I talked about how Mandelsonian Mycroft was... Conan Doyle says Mycroft is the British government. He’s the power behind the throne. Both Mandelson and Mycroft are the sort of people who, I think, would sit out a world war. [They would think] there's a longer game to be played.