Film and TV

TV Choice: Armstrong & Miller, Saw IV & The Event

By Mike Pyle
October 28, 2010

Every week our square-eyed reporters take a look at what’s on TV – the highlights and the lowlights – and pick what they think you should watch or avoid.

The Event, Channel 4, Friday, 9pm

This high-budget, high-octane US series started last week. If you missed it – as is always the way with these things – you’re too late to get into it because the plot is as complicated as an EastEnders family tree. It’s only been one episode!

I did see it, well some of it, and quickly decided that this is another show where they don’t tell you what’s going on to create a false feeling of tension. It just isn’t worth my time.

Pre-order The Event on DVD here.

To generate total confusion in viewers – something which the makers seem to think is desirable – the writers have even seen fit to do away with that old-fashioned concept of things happening in the right order.

Each scene starts with some text appearing on the screen saying ‘two days earlier’ or ‘a week last Thursday’ or ‘about lunchtime on a rainy Tuesday sometime in August last year, or was it the year before?’

The writers probably haven’t even decided what The Event even is yet. And won’t until you’ve sat through about nine series, bought the special-edition, 72-disc box-set and spent hours trawling internet forums full of geeks’ spurious ideas – “the president is actually an alien”, “it’s all an allegory for that BT commercial where you get to choose the ending”.

Don’t bother with it, it will only sap your time, your bank-account and your popularity among people with brains.

Saw IV, Channel 4, Friday, 11.20pm

The first Saw film was brilliant.

It was original, shocking and very clever. Sadly it has spawned about 27 sequels, each one serving to only degrade the memory of the original. I’ve no idea if I’ve seen this one or not. I can’t remember if it’s the one where the crazed bad guy makes a nun chew off her ankles in a dark toilet or the one where the flawed dad has to perform complicated surgery on himself using a rusty spoon in a dark toilet.

It’s Hallowe’en this weekend, so across the millions of channels most of us have there will be loads of horror films on, and most of them won’t rely on senseless gore to give you a fright.

The Armstrong and Miller Show, BBC One, Saturday, 10.15pm

Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller have quietly become one of the best comedy duos on TV.

They’re a bit like James Corden and Matt Horne except they’re funny, clever, people like them and neither of them is morbidly obese.

Their new series reprises old characters like the street-talking

RAF pilots and introduces some new ones.

Armstrong and Miller’s sketch show is, like almost every other, a little bit hit and miss but less-so than others like That Mitchell and Webb Look and School of Comedy.

Chris Moyles’ Quiz Night, Channel 4, Monday, 9pm

During this quiz there will be one question that you can’t figure out, which will nag at you and cause you to scratch your head like a cartoon character – just what is the point in Chris Moyles?

The breakfast DJ is staying up late on a school night to host this show which sees comedian Michael McIntyre, leprechaun Louis Walsh and tangerine-skinned soap actress Jessie Wallace attempt to answer questions posed by other celebrities.

Just imagine, if you go to bed after this and then listen to Radio One when you get up, Chris Moyles will be the last thing you hear at night and the first thing you hear in the morning.

You can then spend the rest of your day wondering just how things got this bad.

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