Childish antics of Top Gear trio (From Herald Series)

Childish antics of Top Gear trio

10:20am Thursday 1st February 2007

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Top Gear (BBC2) is back for a new series, heralded by the Radio Times welcoming "the Top Gear boys". No, the three presenters aren't boys - they are supposedly grown men, although they behave as childishly as a group of excitable, sniggering schoolboys. Tastelessly, the Radio Times used the headline "Car crash TV", as Top Gear is the programme on which Richard Hammond had a potentially fatal accident driving a jet-propelled car at a ridiculous speed. Sunday's episode showed us film of the event - repeated several times.

The presenters treated it either as a jolly jape or as a stirring example of Richard's heroism. I wonder if their reaction would have been different if Hammond's stupid escapade had killed one of the cameramen. But it's typical of the gung-ho attitude of the programme: worshipping cars, speed and lunatic antics. Sitting in the jet car, Richard shouted "I just want to go faster! More speed!" and another segment of the programme had Jeremy Clarkson exulting at "doing power sliding at 110mph". Is all this just "boys' games" or is it bonkers behaviour that sets a bad example?

Bonkers (ITV1) is the title of the first of two new sitcoms shown one after another on Thursday nights. It's about a suburban area where the residents are all obsessed with sex, so you might call it a sex comedy - except that there aren't any laughs. Instead we get Carry On situations like a naked man jumping out of a window and references to another man who "can't get it up". It is held together with some desperation by Liza Tarbuck, although she is not helped by the man of her dreams looking remarkably unattractive. ITV has a bad enough record for presenting pallid sitcoms but they must have been bonkers to choose this one.

The same applies to Benidorm (ITV1), which follows immediately and is equally bitty and unfunny. There are weak jokes about vaginas and faulty lavatories, and the cast is crowded with stereotypes, including a gay couple, a vulgar Northern family, a couple arguing about having a baby, and even a flirtatious Spanish waiter. If you remember Duty Free (despite trying to forget), it's on the same level of clichéd humour about Brits on holiday abroad.

Ah, but here's a programme about music - in fact a whole BBC series called The Tchaikovsky Experience - although much of it is tucked away on BBC4. Terrestrial viewers have been able to watch fine performances of Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty, the former preceded by an informative documentary in which Darcey Bussell talked about the ballet.

Tchaikovsky (BBC2) was the first of a two-part survey of the composer by Charles Hazlewood, who used some over-familiar tricks - such as dramatised reconstructions of events in the composer's life. Hazlewood started by asserting that Tchaikovsky has "become too popular" and that he was not the emotional character often portrayed. Yet that is how the dramatised episodes depicted him: tortured by his homosexuality and desperate for his music to be applauded.

Hazlewood conducted some helpfully long extracts from Tchaikovsky's music, but he behaved like a conductor in a Hollywood musical, with an overwrought expression and exaggerated gestures. Altogether it was an educative introduction to Tchaikovsky, but perhaps presenters should treat viewers as grown-ups who don't need everything to be hyped-up.

This week's prime example of copycat television is The Comedy Map of Britain (BBC2), which borrows from Comedy Connections the idea of compiling a programme from bits of old comedy shows. This new six-part series of one-hour programmes will travel around Britain, visiting places associated with particular comedians or sitcoms.

Last Saturday's first programme went from west London to Bath, calling briefly at such places as Acton (the home of Reggie Perrin's "Sunshine Desserts"), Slough (naturally) and Oxford (where Michael Palin made his debut in a cellar). All this was illustrated with interviews and pieces of archive film - gently amusing if you had nothing better to do.

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