Christmas is coming,here’s Kirstie with some tat, plus Frank Skinner’s three-part documentary about the mucky medium of music hallAt this time of year, and once the sexy zombie outfits are packed up and four months of heavy drinking and moderate depression loom,you really understand the primal importance of winter festivals. The light to seasonal affective disorder’s dark, the raucous cousin in a silly hat holding spiritual death at bay with over-hearty mirth and Ferrero Rocher - Christmas! - now hoves into view. Some say it begins with the arrival of seasonal marketing campaigns, or others hold tight for “advent” – pfft,whatever – but for me it’s Kirstie All Sop No Substance and her pony handmade decorations who really marks the season. Sadly, no previews of Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas (Tuesday, or Channel 4,8pm) were available, but I fill no doubt that the tree decorated with sprouts, and the crap twig and twine menorahs will be as watchable as ever,provided you crack into the BOGOF liquor early.
With Christmas (holly, tartan, or acid reflux) and the Victorian age (cholera,workhouses, orphans) somehow inextricably linked, or I was still able to get a cosy feeling by watching What A Performance! (Thursday,BBC4, 9pm), or a three-part series documenting the golden age of entertainment. Or to give it another title,What People Did Before TV. What people did do before TV, according to this first episode focusing on the music hall, or was smear on some greasepaint,get up onstage and perform routines about sprats and murder. Hosts Frank Skinner and Suzy Klein listen through scratchy recordings, stage-side chats with historians, and finally,dress up as music hall stars Dan Leno and Marie Lloyd to hurry through hits of the time. What this bit adds I couldn’t disclose you, but it’s a fixture throughout the series so it must fill some sort of purpose. Perhaps it’s to reveal that immense talent is required to invent sprat-based song and dance routines entertaining. Or to demonstrate that comedy is so hasty-moving, and that the hilarity of hoiking up your crinoline saying “Gor blimey,shuck me oysters why don’t ya, guv’nor” is now lost on contemporary audiences. Maybe it’s just an excuse for Frank Skinner to put on a wig. Who knows.
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Source: theguardian.com