TV Reviews

• Married Single Other: Episode 1

  ITV1 presents us with that most fatal of shows - the comedy drama - a turn of phrase that usually ensures that there’ll be a dearth of both, wrapped up with some cute and twee opening credits.

   
• The Vampire Diaries: Season 1 Episode 1

  So, what are you, Team Edward or Team Jacob? How about Team Stefan? ITV2's latest US import The Vampire Diaries follows familiar ground right off the bat as mournful brunette bumps into pretty boy who’s - gosh - just too beautiful to be human.

   
• Secret Diary Of A Call Girl: Series 3 Episodes 1 & 2

  Back for a third series and opening with a double bill, the storylines of Secret Diary Of A Call Girl are beginning to catch up with the events that inspired them in the first place.

   
• Shameless: Series 7 Episode 1

  When Shameless arrived on our screens seven years ago it was a genuinely exciting, brashly fresh (even a little radical in its sympathetic portrait of council estate Britain) addition to the pantheon of British TV drama.

   
• Skins: Series 4 Episode 1

  Kids lie all the time, don’t they? And one of the best lies put around in recent years is that Skins is a teen drama. It isn’t, of course: it’s far better than that.

   
• An Englishman In New York

  The inspiration of the Sting song of the same name, An Englishman In New York is one of those rare jewels that appears in the Christmas viewing schedules and is truly must-see viewing amongst the turkeys.

   
• Doctor Who: The Waters Of Mars

  It’s the end, but the moment is prepared for. And so begins David Tennant’s final run as The Doctor before he’s thrown in at the deep end, and it’s appropriate that for such a bombastic, energetic and fast moving Doctor, the story demands that he’s immobile, frustrated and unable to help.

   
• Enid

  It’s interesting that the BBC have chosen to air the life story of Enid Blyton, since the corporation infamously refused to adapt her stories within her lifetime. But BBC4 appear to do fractured life stories very well, be it Harry H Corbett or Kenneth Williams.

   
• Misfits

  With great hype, comes great responsibility. You can’t have escaped E4’s relentless pushing of its new superhero drama - a kind of Fantastic Four with ASBOs.

   
• Psychoville

  TV has been doing a fair a bit of riffing on the classics this week, particularly with Psychoville, in which a seemingly one-shot love letter to Alfred Hitchcock's Rope had an episode that contained more than a few shot-for-shot flourishes borrowed from the James Stewart original.

   

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