11:08am Wednesday 8th July 2009
Getting On (BBC4, 10pm); The Grandparent Diaries (BBC4, 9pm).
Taking The Flak (BBC2, 9pm) The Richard Dimbleby Lecture 2009 (BBC1, 10.35pm) PETER CAPALDI is having a busy week. He’s playing a government minister in the five-nights-in-a-row Torchwood on BBC1 and now turns up as director of comedy-drama Getting On. This is part of the BBC’s Grey Expectations series, which is a season of programmes that are, as the Beeb puts it, “dedicated to understanding life’s twilight years”.
It is set in a hospital, although a long way from ER and Casualty, as well as comedies such as Only When I Laugh and Surgical Spirit. It has Jo Brand heading the performers in a show that is devised, written and performed by the cast. She has had experience of the health service having been a psychiatric nurse before turning to comedy.
She plays Nurse Kim Wilde, who works on Ward B4, “a backwater of an NHS Trust Hospital” where the elderly are cared for. This is the world of slips, trips and hips. Most days involve routine and rather messy chores, although this day looks like being different because a new, male matron has just started work. Coupled with an unsavoury sample and a deceased patient, the medical team is going to be tested to the limits.
Joining Brand in the cast are Vicki Pepperdine ,as Dr Pippa Moore, Joanna Scanlan, as Sister Den Flixter, and Ricky Grover, as Matron Hilary Loftus.
THE Grey Expectations series about attitudes to ageing starts with The Grandparent Diaries which, as the title suggests, looks at the relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren.
First up is fashion designer Ian Batten as he takes his seven grandchildren, ranging in age from toddlers to teens, for a weekend by the sea.
He believes his approach to fatherhood reflected the liberal spirit of the Sixties, and the next generation certainly seems to appreciate his laidback attitude.
But will his own kids agree that he was a cool, open-minded dad? Or, like so many other parents, will they decide that their grandchildren get away with a lot more than they would ever have been allowed to? Archive footage and interviews help to show how Ian’s experiences have shaped his family relationships.
NEW comedy drama Taking The Flak follows the hilarious Drop The Dead Donkey in trying to find fun in foreign correspondents, namely BBC journalists arriving in a small African country in the middle of a war.
Low-ranking journalist and local stringer Harry (Bruce Mackinnon) thinks it could be his big break, now the country has become the centre of global attention.
But then he finds himself bigfooted when heavyweights from the BBC World Service appear. Senior foreign correspondents David Bradburn (Martin Jarvis) with Margaret Hollis (Joanna Brookes) roll into town – and that’s when things really get interesting.
Mackenzie Crook guest stars as Nigel Bagwell, with real-life journos, off the telly – Bill Turnbull, Sian Williams and George Alagiah – appearing as themselves.
THE Richard Dimbleby Lecture is 37 years old, and was named in honour of the veteran news broadcaster, who died in 1965. It’s usually delivered by an influential businessperson or politician, and previous participants have included Bill Clinton, General Sir Mike Jackson, Dame Stella Rimington and Dr Rowan Williams.
This year, the Prince of Wales will be taking his place at the lectern.
“I’m absolutely delighted that the Prince of Wales has agreed to give this year’s lecture and look forward to hearing his insights on the changing world,”
says BBC1 controller Jay Hunt.
His lecture comes 20 years after his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, gave his own Dimbleby Lecture.
In this keynote address, the heir to the throne will set out some of the serious challenges he believes the world faces and explores how some of these issues could be tackled in the years ahead.
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