MORGANA ROBINSON’S THE AGENCY, BBC2, 10pm
I CAN be a tad cynical. A bit grumpy. Miserable, really. Yet this series made me laugh. I can hardly believe it: laughter on a Monday!
It’s framed as a documentary about a talent agency called Mann Management, but that’s just an excuse for Morgana Robinson to show off her uncanny, brilliant impressionist skills. Every famous person who is repped by the agency is played by Robinson: Joanna Lumley, Russell Brand, Danny Dyer, Mel and Sue, Adele and more, but her best and most prominent impersonation is poor old Natalie Cassidy – better known as “Sonia from EastEnders”.
She plays Cassidy as a frumpy, simple woman who cares for her obese father in a dingy house in the suburbs. It would be a cruel portrayal were it not so funny. Cassidy is naïve and thinks she’s a global superstar. She’s looking forward to an awards ceremony where EastEnders has been nominated as best soap for the millionth year in a row, so she goes round the charity shops with her oafish dad to find a nice frock.
GRAND TOURS OF THE SCOTTISH ISLANDS, BBC1, 7.30pm
DOES the look of a place shape the character of its inhabitants?
With that question, Paul Murton explores the north of Skye, saying if there is truth to it “then the island folk here must be a formidable lot!”
The land is heroic, rugged and grand, and “seems to come from the realms of myth and legend”.
We quickly see why he’s called this episode, Land of Giants and Faeries. Trotternish Ridge, a “volcanic wilderness”, is like the backbone of Skye and involves some tough hiking. But perhaps its weird rocks weren’t formed by volcanic action; a local legend says an elderly couple of giants were turned to stone, creating the 50m Old Man of Storr. Indeed, the landscape seems so enchanted and otherworldly that many sci-fi films have used this setting, such as Star Wars and Alien.
And Murton finds dinosaur footprints on the land, made 170 million years ago, which are so clear you can even make out the individual toes of Skye’s stamping sauropods.
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