TV is great at the moment. We have Sugar doing his grumpy Nookie Bear impression (that should get more Google hits) on the Apprentice, the new series of Doctor Who begins on 15 April and my Uncle Don Load is supplying me with some great stuff from the US. For example, we get TWO doses of the Apprentice every week thanks to Donald Trump’s original show airing for a fifth season parallel with our own show. The US series is still superior to our own because there really is a sense of wealth and splendour and the whizzy NY skylines compared to the drab and dreary cuts of London (now twinned with Brentwood) in our own show. Sugar might be an entrepreneur, but he is small potatoes compared to Trump and this limits the show somewhat. But what the heck, I am still enjoying both shows.
My new love is something called “American Inventor”. It’s like Dragon’s Den but without that Andy Serkis guy from the Lord of the Rings movies wittering on about his precious inventions and constantly fricking reiterating exactly what happened on the screen precisely 30 seconds after it has happened like we are all comatose goldfish stuck on the wrong side of the cathode ray bowl. But I digress…American Inventor takes the idea of Dragon’s Den of finding clever inventions and combines it with a Pop Idol type panel – heck, even Peter Jones from Dragon’s Den appears on the show as the mean and sensible Englishman – a bit like Simon Cowel but without the good teeth. The show works so well because it manages to parade the right combination of genuinely clever inventions with socially inept crackpots and those inventors with a sob story. Like the guy who sold everything, left his wife and is living in his car to push his idea for “Bullletball” – a game which is basically pingpong without the net and without the paddles and you use your hands to hit the ball. He wanted it to be an Olympic sport – the guy had clearly forgotten to take his medication.
It is so brilliantly wonderful that the Media Guardian reported today that there is a bidding war to bring a UK version. I don’t think a UK version would work because we already have Dragon’s Den for that, but they should immediately put the US series on ITV2. It shows just why US TV shows like this are better than our own because they have more entertaining nutters than we have here.
Uncle Don also sent me the second US series of the Office which has now eclipsed its UK version on the funny scale. Watching the Gervais version now quite an ordeal of tedium. Funny how it goes. Over here, still liking “My Name is Earl” which has a novel concept and has characters that are instantly likeable, even though they might have a dubious past. Jason Lee rules with his Tom Selleck moustache.
Anyway, enough with the TV talk, you will think I’ve got square eyes!

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