PETER KAY’S COMEDY SHUFFLE, BBC1, 9pm
I GRUMBLED as I sat down to watch this. Bloody clip show, I moaned. Lazy, I sneered.
This new series is a jumble of Peter Kay’s chat show appearances, scenes from Car Share and Phoenix Nights, out-takes from Max And Paddy’s Road To Nowhere, and snippets from his stand-up performance at Blackpool Tower.
And even though I grumbled, I have to admit I often laughed. I laughed reluctantly, but it still counts.
I laughed reluctantly when Kay bumbled around the circus ring at the Tower telling us about a man who went to the doctor with a steering wheel jammed down his trousers. “What’s the problem?” asks the doc? “I dunno,” says the man, “But it’s drivin’ me nuts.” Later in the show Kay is joined by Susan Boyle to sing I Know Him So Well in a strange tribute to Trevor McDonald.
It’s all silly, harmless, nostalgic stuff, and reminded me of Saturday nights at my gran’s watching The Generation Game and Russ Abbot.
THE CRYSTAL MAZE, C4, 9pm
I HATE remakes, reboots, rejigs and reunions. Leave things as they are, I want to cry!
If something was good in its day, there are a whole web of reasons why that was so, and they can’t be magically replicated. I shudder at the thought. People tell me there are remakes of the Italian Job and Alfie: I shudder even more.
Yet there’s no shuddering here.
I adored The Crystal Maze in the 1990s with Richard O’Brien and now it’s being revived with a different presenter. It’s another Richard, the equally weird and spiky Richard Ayoade, and I feel quite chipper about it.
The show sticks to its old format, bringing back the Dome, and the Medieval, Aztec, Futuristic and Industrial Zones, and has the same catchy theme tune.
I think we’re in safe hands here.
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