Television Magazine

Ear Candy: No Such Thing as a Fish

Hosted by QI’s question researchers, also known as the QI Elves, the podcast has enlivened people’s commutes since it launched in 2014, with a weekly dose of unbelievable facts and stories that didn’t make the series.

In each episode, researchers James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Ptaszynski and Dan Schreiber discuss the best pieces of trivia they’ve come across that week.

Comfort Classic: Only Fools and Horses

If you can judge a sitcom solely on the strength of its catchphrases, Only Fools and Horses is a gem. Three decades on from its heyday, Derek “Del Boy” Trotter’s sayings – “lovely jubbly”, “you plonker” and “cushty” – are part of our everyday language. We even remember his terrible Franglais – “mange tout, mange tout, as the French say” – by which Del meant “no problem”.

Dan Sefton's TV diary

Saturday morning, 7:00am. Heading into the weekend shift on my motorbike. A small bonus of returning to the NHS is having permission to ride to and from work.

I scoot past a small herd of red deer grazing by the side of the road, tempted down from the hill by the empty roads and the promise of sweet verge grass. An almost perfect post-apocalyptic visual.

As a rural motorcyclist, I fear deer more than anything else, convinced my ultimate fate is to be speared by a stray antler as I whizz around a blind corner at full lean. Thinking of the NHS, I slow down a bit.

ITV’s jungle juggernaut

Snakes chewing through camera cables, raging bush fires and thunderstorms knocking out feeds. It seems the challenges of filming a TV show in the jungle are as tricky as any Bushtucker Trial.

Sourcing 450,000 cockroaches and convincing celebrities that there really won’t be any secret pizza deliveries are some of the tasks undertaken by the producers of ITV’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!

Peter Bowker and Christpher Eccleston make real reality television

Peter Bowker doesn’t “do diversity”. Yet, over the past couple of decades, this RTS and Bafta award-winning screenwriter has become TV’s “go-to guy” for dramas featuring people with disabilities.

A comic and compelling double act, of Bowker and his long-time collaborator the actor Christopher Eccleston, entertained the RTS North West’s capacity audience at the Lowry in March. They traced the development of Bowker’s work as he has, increasingly, challenged stereotypical representations of people affected by learning disabilities.

Disney+ steps in for families

When Disney announced that its eagerly awaited streaming service, Disney+, would launch in the UK and Western Europe in March no one knew that the service’s debut would coincide with a global pandemic keeping millions of people at home.

“With much of the UK looking for entertainment while they are stuck at home, Disney+ is likely to be a big hit,” said Shiv Pabari, director of media and entertainment at Simon-Kucher & Partners. “Families, in particular, will be excited by the content offered.”