BRIAN COX’S RUSSIA, BBC2, 9pm
ANY show that can pack in Robert Burns, orgies and Leningrad has to be worth a look, right?
In the last of this series tracing the history of notable Scots in Russia, actor Brian Cox strips off in a Russian sauna to be whipped and slapped with greenery to tell us of The Beggar’s Benison, a sex club whose rituals were brought to Russia by a Scot called Porter in the time of Catherine the Great, and who “championed the Scottish phallus in Russia”.
We hear that in Stalinist Russia Burns was translated and became “a poster boy for the workers’ struggle”. But Stalin was sexually very prudish and would only welcome Burns’s work if it was portrayed as being solely about equality for the common man. He would not permit any risque Western writers to be published. Serious chaps only!
Then an abrupt change of tone takes us to the Siege of Leningrad. Some workers in Airdrie sent the starving population a gift, a tartan-clad book, to symbolise comradeship, and Cox discusses it with some veterans.
OUR FRIEND VICTORIA, BBC1, 9.30pm
THE jovial Michael Ball presents this look back at Victoria Wood’s work, focusing on her comedy about sex and love.
She joked about the awkwardness of sex, and how lots of us worry if we’re doing it right. How do you know you’re doing it correctly if you’ve only ever had one partner?
What of the poor innocent woman who’d slept with no-one but her husband and who accidentally caught sight of some porn one day. Ah, so that’s how it’s done! She rushed home to say, “Ken, I don’t know what you’ve been doing all these years with a tin of biscuits and a string bag!”
We’re treated to clips from her stand-up and sitcoms, all on the messy topic of sex, and Ball and others add their anecdotes.
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