Alter Ego Telly Addict

Hopping Mad - 22/4/99

Short Skirts and Frank Sinatra - 8/4/99

Hopping Mad - 22/4/99

Running around down-and-out Chicago searching for a father who has the only matching blood for his little girl is probably not the most conventional team-building exercise. However it seemed to work for Dr John Carter and his intern Kelly in ER, which is about time as the writers have made him a real arse this series. The race against time was pretty nail-biting stuff, and the dollops of humour between John and Kelly kept that bittersweet balance that ER excels in. Apparently the ratings are down in the US now that George Clooney has left, but it's such an ensemble piece that I'm sure it can ride out the storm.

As co-creator of Fireball, the game of apartment wrecking involving a tennis ball and lighter fluid, Joey has surely achieved more than he ever could as an actor! This week's Friends episode was lacking a little sparkle, as seasonal Christmas episodes usually do, but Unemployed Ross is proving to be a good storyline. Sorry, not unemployed but "on sabbatical" to which the ever-intellectually-challenged Joey asks: "I didn't know you were religious?" Obviously he didn't get as far as S on the "expand your vocabulary" toilet paper that Chandler bought him.

Ally McBeal had it's fair share of religion, with the firm defending a nun who was fired because she broke her vow of celibacy. The most abiding image though was of John's ressurrected frog Stefan leaping from his watery grave only be accidentally thrown against a toilet door by the terror-stricken girlies. The effect of the pale green amphibian sliding slowly down the door, little arms and legs helplessly splayed, was priceless!

There was more seasonal frolics in Cupid, but this time it was a Halloween at a dance club. The loser guys really got into Cupid/Trevor's game where whoever got the most rejections won. All the old classics were used with a vengeance such as "do you have a tattoo I can read?", "I can touch my eyebrows with my tongue" and "if I said you had a beautiful body..." A Grease-style dance-off kept the tempo going, and it looks like the lovely female psychiatrist has at last been paired off through Cupid/Trevor's interference. However has this gesture back-fired on the lonely delusional/deity? The sparkling banter will no doubt be cranked up a notch now that Dr. Allen is taken so a curse on Channel 2 for postponing the next episode for a fortnight!

The New Professionals has inexplicably disappeared from our screens, leaving unanswered the questions of whether Edward Woodward had any friends who weren't high up in the CIA/FBI or US Army, if the female agent would ever get to escape the office for more than 5 minutes every episode and if Chiselled Features was indeed Action Man incarnate and had a switch at the back of his head to make his eyes move.

Short Skirts and Frank Sinatra - 8/4/99

"And lo, the Powers That Be in ER did relent, and Carter did lose his beard..." After a particularly sticky emergency involving carpet glue, Carter had no choice but to stop acting like he was auditioning for the part of Robinson Crusoe or as a replacement for the guy in Party of Five and shave off the growth on his face. Huzzah! Things are looking up again.

The so-bad-it's-good series The New Professionals this week implied that the London mafia hangs out in a very small Italian restaurant - obviously the budget can't stretch to The Godfather standards. Once again the bungling British police force got in the way of CI5. This led to a particularly tense scene where the CI5 agents threatened to smash the Drug Squad's officer's Frank Sinatra LP if he didn't give them some information. Ooh, they're so hard! A highpoint was seeing Nick Moran of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels as an East End baddie. Well, Edward Woodward has stooped low enough to accept the role of Paternal Boss, so I suppose there's no shame in Nick doing the same.

Once again the female agent did Miss Moneypenny tasks such as look up telephone numbers. I don't know why she wears a gun around the office as apart from diffusing a bomb in the first episode she hasn't done anything more than be a PA. Maybe they're not allowed to have two agents in the field wearing eyeliner at any one time. I swear the Pierce Brosnan chisel-a-like is wearing some!

Looks like Thanksgiving is going the way of Halloween for American television, giving the Friends producers the excuse to indulge in out-of-the-ordinary effects. The spectre of 80s fashion was never more forcefully conveyed then in Rachel's shoulder-padded sweater and Chandler's Miami Vice white jacket with the sleeves rolled up in the Thanksgiving flashback! But why give Chandler yet another physical deformity of a severed toe - wasn't the third nipple enough of a burden?

Ally McBeal addressed one of the burning issues of the series - why does she wear such short skirts? I'm just relieved that the silly pastel scarves around her neck have disappeared. In the end the only reason given after being put in contempt of court, jailed for a night and standing trial was "because I like to". Is it too cynical to suggest that it's probably more the fact that Calista's legs help with the ratings?

Cupid balances out the looks stakes admirably and is shaping up to be a pretty good series. The premise is a bit vomit-inducing: Cupid (or is he?) gets thrown out of Olympus and can only return if he gets 100 couples together in modern-day Chicago without using his bow and arrow. Understandably Cupid's claim that he's a god gets him arrested and then put in the care of a female psychiatrist who's very sceptical about romance. The plots are light-hearted enough, but the quick-fire one-to-one banter is worthy of a scene in When Harry Met Sally. It's great to see Jeremy Piven get centre stage at last after Ellen and a brilliant cameo in Grosse Pointe Blank as John Cusack's friend Paul.

On a blacker note, the Sky listings magazine for April arrived this week and there is still no sign of the new series of the X-Files. It's just not on - in both senses!