Your must-watch television guide — from alcoholic dogs to mad men

By Rajyasree Sen It’s not all terrible in TV land, even though it might seem that way every time you switch the telly on. It does seem like we have to watch the 100th re-run of Friends, or the same season of Dexter but just on another channel, or Akshay Kumar dressed in increasingly scary outfits, barking orders at the Khatron Ke Khiladi faux celebrity contestants, and of course let’s not forget suddenly-senile- Simi-ji. But all is not lost. Out of the very questionable entertainment on TV, here are the top five shows worth a watch right now. There is just one Indian show out of the entire lot, which might have to do with the fact that either we make soaps and dramas— not very good ones at that— or we rip-off international formats while making Indian non-fiction shows. There are a few new original Indian shows which are holding out some promise, but we’ll wait a few episodes before pledging allegiance to them. Till then, as the Pet Shop Boys said, we will Go West for our entertainment. The Graham Norton show BBC Entertainment, Saturday, 10 pm First off the bat, this is one of best talk shows possible. Granted I’m still scarred from watching Simi Aunty’s very odd new programme where I think she was trying to model herself on Oprah with a dash of Mallika Sherawat thrown in. But BBC Entertainment’s Graham Norton Show is a must-watch. He’s funny, flamingly gay and proud of it (unlike a certain other male talk show host in India), and really knows how to work his celebrities and the crowd. With a live audience responding to all his jokes, Graham Norton usually interviews three guests— actors, singers, comedians— it’s always a nice mix. There’s no simpering, fawning talk. No asking how they felt when their dog died or their parents beat them, just fun, anecdotal banter and a lot of self-deprecating humour. All the guests have a glass of wine and most have fabulously outrageous stories to share. [caption id=“attachment_26112” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“With a live audience responding to all his jokes, Graham Norton usually interviews three guests – actors, singers, comedians – it’s always a nice mix. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images”]  [/caption] Last week it was KD LANG (yes, she’s all caps now, which was announced on the show), who shared how she made an utter fool of herself in front of Anjelica Houston, Jennifer Hudson who kept being mocked by Norton for losing 80 pounds of weight and for being an American Idol contestant, and one of Norton’s comedian friends. It’s a lovely, intelligent, funny, irreverent show. Definitely worth a watch— especially for Simi Aunty and KJo, both of whom could learn a lesson or two about not taking themselves so seriously. Mad Men Season 4 FX, Wednesday, 8.30 pm This is of course a show which might just be more popular with the women, thanks to Don Draper— the man we all love and don’t mind being cheated on by. Mad Men has made the Sixties stylish. Set in an advertising agency in the New York of the Sixties, the styling is just perfect from the historical events which are woven into the script with actual news footage like the day JFK was shot and the effect it had on Americans shown through the characters, to the sets to the clothes and the dialogue. There are women smoking and drinking while being pregnant but totally repressed in the workplace, paced by the slow emergence of affirmative action in the US— spectacular. It’s like a lesson in scripting for all those interested in creating interesting television, and for the rest of us it’s just pure entertainment. The anti-hero is Don Draper— intelligent, suave, rakish, and successful. A better cad than a dad (I don’t know where I read this line, but I thought the description fit him perfectly). There’s his wife played by January Jones, who’s now in X-Men First Class, and a whole bunch of other interesting characters. Quick repartee, snappy dialogues, excellent screenplay, interesting plot twists— Mad Men pretty much delivers on it all. You almost wish you were living in the Sixties. Family Food Fight TLC, Saturday 6 pm This is a new show on TLC which is quite a nice piece of food reality. The name pretty much says it all it’s a show where two families compete over food. The competition is hosted and judged by two food critics who are charming, sweet and funny and not in the least bit nasty. Which is a pleasant change from the über-nasty judges on most shows, who must have had terribly traumatic childhoods to behave like they do on international television. Two members of a family form a team, and there are three teams on the first episode of each segment who then have to cook their family’s favourite food for the elimination round. Two families then get chosen, and have to cook a three-course meal of the most tasty and well-balanced dishes their family eats, and finally have to prepare a fancy meal for the last round. What’s nice is that everyone is pleasant to each other, the teams have till now comprised of interesting pairings— not just husbands and wives, but twin brothers, and a father and his 9-year old daughter who made the most delightful shortcake. There was an Indian couple who cooked chapatti, butter chicken and payasam and were lauded by the judges. You see them cook, chat, eat what the other team’s cooked, be generous with compliments. No trauma, no shouting, no bad food. Just a really good food reality show. Continue reading on page 2 Man Vs Wild Discovery, Tuesday, 9 pm This one is definitely for the strong-hearted. Bear Grylls is an English adventurer and the presenter of this show in which he gets dropped into inhospitable places all over the world— like the Amazon forest or the Sahara desert and then proceeds to show us lesser mortals how to survive and emerge a little shaken but not too stirred from these places. Bear was the youngest Briton to climb the Everest, that too 18 months after breaking three vertebrae in a free-fall parachute accident, and had even thought of joining the Indian army after spending years trekking through the Himalayas and the mountains in West Bengal. He cracks a smile and a little joke while swigging his own urine in the desert, or eating a live snake, or killing a sheep and chewing its eyeballs for a protein kick, and then using the carcass as a sleeping bag and floating device. These are old seasons which have been shown abroad in 2008, but the production value isn’t outdated at all. It’s also the height of vicarious TV viewing. You know you’ll never find yourself floating down the Amazon or running through a forest fire. But it’s good to know what you could do to save yourself, if it happens. Family Guy Star World, Monday to Friday, 11.30 pm This is the only cartoon I watch. Last thing at night, just before you hit the sack, nothing can make you forget the day’s woes quicker than an intellectual alcoholic dog who speaks in a clipped Brit accent, and a baby who is a child genius who aspires to murder his mother and take over the world at the age of one which he has remained at since Family Guy started. The rest of the family includes an obese dim-witted loud-mouthed father, a fat useless son who has an evil monkey living in his cupboard, the daughter who is treated as an object of ridicule by the entire family and is voiced surprisingly by Mila Kunis, and the only sane member of the family, the stay-at-home mom. And much like Wisteria Lane, there’s a sex-addict neighbour and a paraplegic ex-police officer. The humour is ribald and definitely offensive with jokes on incest, racism, Jews, sexism. The dog, Brian is the wisest member of the family, followed by the baby Stewie and then Meg the daughter. The voice-overs are brilliant and are done by Mila Kunis, Seth Greene and Seth Mc Farlane who does the voices for both the baby and the dog. Just as an example of the level of sensitivity practiced by the show, one of the episodes was called ‘The Hand that Rocks the Wheelchair’. Not for the politically correct or the serious and dour. And just in case you thought all I do is watch imports, here’s an Indian show that really delivers. Beautiful People CNBC, Saturday, 9 pm This is one of the few interview shows worth watching nowadays. Hosted by Anuradha Sengupta, who has remained consistently good over the years, the show features one public figure a week. Cutting across a cross-section of politicians, actors, activists, business leaders, Sengupta interviews someone who has been in the news in that week or in that fortnight. Not as severe and interrogative as Karan Thapar’s show or as facetious as Koel Purie’s, this one’s a nice blend of asking the pertinent questions while not being aggressive or boring. So whether it’s Amit Mitra in his new avatar as didi’s go-to man for bringing industry into Bengal, or Amole Gupta and his son talking about the wonderful Stanley ka Dabba, or Prashant Bhushan batting for Ramdev and maybe regretting doing so now— it’s an interesting 30-minutes, peppered with facts, anecdotes and candour sans gossip. It’s also nice to see a female interviewer who knows her stuff and is not dolled up to the T, and more importantly isn’t fawning over or pawing her guest. It’s definitely one of the rare interview shows which you’d like to carry on beyond the half hour slot. Rajyasree Sen is a restaurateur, TV connoisseur and unsolicited opinion-giver.