

ITV
Saturday, the 10th of September
9.45PM
(Watch it here)
Somewhere, in the backroom of some deserted, downmarket bar, four poofs are slouched around a piano, watching ITV's Saturday night schedule. “Oh look,” says one. “It's The Saturdays.” The piano-based poof starts playing "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting". The others join in for a half-hearted chorus. They wait. They watch. “It's Benedict Cumberbatch,” another poof announces. The piano-playing poof is already tapping away at "Free As A Bird". “What's that about?” asks poof number three. “You know – he works with Martin Freeman in Sherlock Holmes. Freeman. Free man. Free as a bird…” Silence. "Well, at least the show's still shit without us,” announces poof two. “Oh, I don't know,” poof one disagrees. “It seems to have a modicum more… class? Is that the word?” At this, piano poof has had enough: “Fuck off.” He slams down the lid. The party evaporates. The poofs stumble half-drunkenly into the evening. Catch the nightbus home. To their miserable little flats. To weep. To drink. Not to sleep.
6
BENNY CUCUMBERPATCH



BBC Parliament
Sunday, the 11th of September
4.20AM
(Watch it here)
Game show in which a platidinous hag has to convince the sort of people who mistake chiropracty for medicine that Britain would be better off if electricity cost £100 per kilowatt, without ever mentioning the words: “I can’t believe you dummies are lapping this shit up.”
1
LUCAS MUCUS The Making of QI
BBC2
Saturday, the 10th of September
9.45PM
(Watch it here)
The most revealing bit in The Making Of QI – basically just lots of talking heads with Alan Davies, Fry, Clarkson, et al – is the moment when producer John Lloyd shows off what looks like wiring diagram. It is the flowchart that he made, long before the series idea was greenlighted. It shows the entire massive cross-branding platform – website, books, DVDs, tea towels, everything, that he’d come up with at the same time. “It wasn’t just going to be a series,” he announces, “It was going to be an entire lens through which to look at the world.” This is why John Lloyd is the most successful TV producer of his generation (Not The Nine O’Clock News, Spitting Image, Blackadder, HIGNFY). Here is a guy who always sees the bigger picture: who set out from the moment he started not to make a programme for cable-knitted dads in pubs, but to own the brandspace of cable-knitted dads in pubs. Vertically and horizontally integrated, stitched up and carved out top to bottom, John Lloyd is the Simon Cowell of the middle classes. Best of luck to him and his colossal fortune.
7
STEPHEN FRY-UP Happy Endings
E4
Thursday, the 8th of September
9PM
(Watch it here)
And so, E4 has finally shuffled the last block of Friends off of its conveyor belt. Goodbye Sunday hangovers with Ross, Rachel, Chandler’s Duck and Ugly Naked Guy. Goodbye "The One Where Matt Le Blanc Eats A Foetus As An Art Statement"; so long "The One Where Tom Selleck’s Blog About How He Hates Jews Becomes An Internet Sensation"; auf wiedersehen "The One Where Lisa Kudrow Ends Up Punching Herself In The Throat Out Of Crippling Loneliness". Yet for all the sentient population’s issues with the cloying tone of the original pals-com, the ongoing slurry of dislikeable couples-in-restaurants-coms that E4 has lined up to replace, well, they really take the biscuit.
1
WORLD'S ONLY CHANDLER
