2 weeks Ago By Garry Bushell
Extraordinary people populate David Blaine Do Not Attempt – nutcases who eat steel nails, kiss venomous snakes, or cake their faces in deadly scorpions. Could the Disney+ show inspire the next set of I’m A Celebrity jungle trials? In episode one, magician and endurance artist Blaine met Brazilian street performers who leapt through hoops of fire, smashed coconuts with their foreheads or rammed knives up their nostrils. One masochist forced pins under his fingernails and showered his backside with red hot sparks.
It’s not so much magic as a procession of possibly deranged daredevils with a death wish. All I could think was: Why waste your time entertaining crowds in the Rio favelas for pocket change when you could join Simon Cowell’s carousel of travelling turns? Last weekend, South Korea’s Eden Choi wowed the judges on Britain’s Got (imported) Talent with his nifty skills, appearing to produce an endless stream of playing cards from his hands. But tell us ITV, how could a semi-pro magician from Solihull hope to compete against an amazing established pro with multiple international awards? BGT ceased being an honest talent show many years ago, preferring to fill air time with acts drawn from TikTok or the international variety circuit, and singers with heart-rending sob stories.
Apart from its shallowness and its hopelessly naïve, puffed-up and under-qualified judges, the biggest irritation of this over-blown series is its incessant, fist-pumping hysteria. It would give an aspirin a migraine. Back in Rio, Blaine met the Valente sisters who have mastered the art of high-diving from 66ft.
It might not be entirely sane but it’s a darn sight more exciting than the New Yorker’s perplexing 44-day stint in a see-through plexiglass box in London 22 years ago. You would have needed to ingest all of Bruce Parry’s psychoactive drugs on Tribe to make that pointless stunt seem riveting. Halogenic drugs have not saved The White Lotus .
Weeks ago, I praised season three of Mike White’s darkly comic drama for its leisurely pace. Apologies for that. All this run has done is illustrate the difference between slow burn and failure to ignite.
Sky Atlantic’s luxury spa saga, now in Thailand, has taken a long time to go nowhere. Doomed embezzler Tim Ratliff (Jason Isaacs) has been drunk and/or drugged and generally incoherent for six whole episodes. Apart from shooting people in his dreams and stealing a gun, he’s done nothing but bumble around like a sleepwalking Joe Biden .
Elsewhere Angry Rick (Walton Goggins) flew to Bangkok to confront the man he thinks killed his father, and avenge the crime...
but then didn’t. Laurie (one of the middle-aged "girls’ trip" trio) slept with dodgy Russian Alexsei only for him to try and con money out of her post-coitus before his furious girlfriend turned up. As predicted the Ruskies were behind the episode two jewellery heist – as hotel security guard Gaitok finally realised.
Meanwhile Gary – aka dodgy Greg, who conned poor doomed Tanya McQuoid last season – has offered Belinda $100K to forget who he really is. We can but hope these separate strands can all be satisfactorily resolved. Right now, the stand-out stars of this season are Chelsea’s teeth and Tim’s prosthetic appendage.
I wanted to like Sky’s Small Town, Big Story . The premise was good – the hidden secrets of a small Irish town are exposed when a Hollywood film crew hit town. But the writing was baggier than Madness’s trousers, and the ending was a wash-out.
This quirky tale of an historic alien abduction would have worked better as a tightly edited three-part miniseries. It had nice lines – “Ulcer says no” said Paddy Considine’s Seamus turning down a drink. But was less Small Town, Big Story, more Slow Town, Big Letdown.
(Why do aliens always abduct folk from rural Ireland or backwoods America anyway? It’s never Oxford or Harvard. Have Kang, Kodos and the Martians seen through the global elite like their pal David Icke?) Staying in Eire, MobLand (Paramount+) is a gangland drama cursed with ‘Oirish’ accents that wander like medieval minstrels. If you can ignore that distraction, the series is partly directed by Guy Ritchie and penned by Top Boy’s Ronan Bennett.
It revolves around kingpin Conrad Harrigan (Pierce Brosnan) who has built his criminal empire on Class A drugs, ruthlessly eliminating rivals. Wife Maeve (Helen Mirren) is the power behind the throne, Tom Hardy is his dour "street-smart" fixer Harry Da Souza and there’s gang war looming with his rivals. Same old, same old, yes, but Hardy makes it watchable.
Finally Have I Got News For You is back, now in its 69 th series, and doing for satire what Trump’s tariffs have done for Wall Street. Can you remember the last time it felt edgy or even-handed? Toothless satire and poor comedies partly explain why the BBC are struggling so, along with their inbuilt bias (amply illustrated by Victoria Derbyshire trying to shout down Trump's former deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka on Newsnight) and their habit of blowing fortunes on unnecessary ‘reviews’. Maybe they should commission an inquiry into that.
Oh, wait...
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