Three lions; two tigers

This week’s unrepresentative Telly Addict is avowedly World Cup-free. Mainly because nobody seemed to care about my coverage last week of the sporting event that is currently ruling my life and dominating my hours spent in front of the telly. (Not a single comment on it was left BTL.) I’ve cast around for something else worth reviewing and, apart from BBC2’s Tigers About The House, which was full of good-hearted people with admirable intentions making two captive tiger cubs live in a man’s house rather than with their actual tiger mother, it was comedy that came to my rescue: Friday Night Dinner, back for series three of top farce on C4; Alan Davies As Yet Untitled, an affable chat show on Dave; and People Just Do Nothing, a superb, nuanced mockumentary about a mock pirate radio station from people you’ve never heard of that came from YouTube and whose first four episodes are now being piloted on the iPlayer exclusively (before going to old-fashioned, steam-powered BBC3 next month). The link to PJDN is here (it’s up for another two weeks). There’s also a montage from Celebrity Masterchef, which I’ve stopped watching due to format fatigue.

Now, in real life, it’s back to the World Cup …

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London sucks

Sorry, failed to announce last week’s Telly Addict (and the one before) on this blog, due to crashing deadlines, so here, in the traditional manner, is the alert for what is, in code, TA145, that’s the 145th weekly TV review I’ve done since April 2011. Coming up to its third birthday! And still basically dancing the same jig: what I have done watched on the telly during the week previous, discussed, with myself, in a manner than cannot meaningfully be transcribed and run as text on the Guardian website, despite constant, whining calls for this service. (The same folk must often complain to a dog that they’d rather it was a cat.) Here we go then: Mind The Gap on BBC2, a nuanced look at the way London sucks talent and money away from “the rest of the country” from Evan Davis; Gogglebox, of course, on C4, although rationed doses for this third series, as as not to do myself out of a job; Shetland on BBC1, a detective drama almost as bleak as Hinterland; the delightful Great Canal Journeys with Prunella Scales and Timothy West on More4; the misleadingly titled Michael McIntyre Chat Show on BBC1; and a clip from Astronauts: Living In Space on C4. Normal service resumed.