Question of the week: will Big Brother work on Channel 5?

So if you haven’t heard, Richard Desmond, owner of various pornographic television stations and publications, as well as the Daily Star and Daily Express (yes, there is some tautology there), has acquired for the princely sum of £200m the rights to make new series of Big Brother on Channel 5. 

Yes, £200 million. For two years.

So the big question this week is:

Is Richard Desmond mental? Can Big Brother even be made to work on Channel 5? If it can, can he ever recuperate £200m with it? And will you watch it?

Answers below or on your own blog, please!

 

Monday’s “Life of Spiderman” news

Film

Theatre

British TV

US TV

UK TV

What have you been watching this week (w/e April 8)?

Channel 4's Campus

My usual recommendations for maximum viewing pleasure are: Archer, Being Human (US), The Daily Show and Stargate Universe. Watch them (and keep an eye on The Stage‘s TV Today Square Eyes feature as well) or you’ll be missing out on the good stuff.

I’ve done quite a lot of reviewing of first-run shows this week – here’s a list, so you have my in-depth feelings on those:

Endgame was quite fun this week, although massively, massively implausible (spoiler: the girl died of an allergic reaction to the bee pollen in her honey ice cream), and if it carries on at this rate, I’ll be adding it to my list of regular recommendations very soon.

I tried Channel 4’s Campus – if you’re a student and therefore too young to have seen actual comedy before, you might have thought this was good; for everyone else, it would have been less enjoyable than self-vivisection. A couple of amusing moments, but largely it seemed impressed by its ability to SAY THE UNTHINKABLE. Unthinkable, that is, if you’re the kind of person who regards swearing and shirking at work as being crimes that should carry the death penalty. Otherwise, very tame.

However, I’ve still to get through BBC1’s Candy Cabs, Comedy Central’s Workaholics and BBC2’s The Crimson Petal and the White – I’ll get through them in due course, but does anyone have good or bad things to say about any of them in the interim?

"What have you been watching this week?" is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched this week. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?