"Congratulations! It's a The Antichrist"

Episode 10: Smouldering Children.

In a development that was entirely expected, episode 10 of American Horror Story featured a shocking twist that made absolutely no sense.

Apparently Violet Harmon, troubled daughter of the Harmon family, died four episodes ago and has been a ghost ever since.

I was initially quite chuffed when they revealed this, as I’d had an inkling this might be the case and I’m generally a bit dim when it comes to things like that.

For example, the first time I saw the Sixth Sense I thought Bruce Willis was a good actor.

Apparently Violet Harmon successfully killed herself a few weeks back and wasn’t saved by her creepy ghost boyfriend Tate as the show seemed to suggest.

Tate’s master plan this week was to get her to kill herself again so she would realize she was dead and thus be happy to stay in the Murder House with him.

Of course thinking about it, the fact that Violet didn’t realize she was a ghost is probably the dumbest plot point on a show absolutely full of them. She didn’t realize she didn’t have to eat for two weeks, never once tried to leave the house, or paused to figure out why she could actually see all the other ghosts in the house for a change.

And this is a young woman who could have gone to Harvard, her father proudly informed us this week.

Not realizing you’re dead is so stupid it makes the women on ‘I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant’ (sadly this is a real show, look it up) look like regular Sherlock Holmeses. (Holmesi?)

Equally stupid was Tate’s plan for convincing Violet to commit suicide again. For some reason, this involved him once again donning the full body rubber gimp suit, this time to attack her father, Ben Harmon, as he walked out of the shower. There was absolutely no reason for him to do this other than to feature two minutes of a man wearing a very tiny towel wrestle with a guy in fetish wear.

Disappointingly for all you ladies, gay men, bisexuals and ‘not sures’ out there, despite what appeared to be a very vigorous grapple, Ben Harmon’s towel remained in place throughout. He must have access to some revolutionary towel tying technology because I can’t even walk to the fridge for a post shower lump of cheese without exposing myself to all and sundry. Which, in hindsight, is almost certainly why I was fired from my childminding job.

This week also saw the cops haul in the mighty Constance with the intention of charging her with the murder of her toy boy/ dogwalker Travis, as well as expressing an interest in the fact that a huge number of people close to her had died in mysterious circumstances over the years.

Fortunately, thanks to the intervention of a unpleasantly stubbled lawyer, not to mention Burnt Face Man unexpectedly and inaccurately confessing to the murder of  Travis, she was left free to chew the scenery another day.

The other development was that Vivienne Harmon is set to be released from the mental hospital where her husband so generously placed her a few weeks back. The stage is set for a rip roaring Antichrist birth next week. It’ll be like a One Born Every Minute/ The Exorcist mashup.

Episode 11: The Birth

In the end it was actually kind of tasteful. After ten weeks of pregnancy horror, the scene where Vivienne Harmon gave birth to her twins (one of whom is the Antichrist, just in case you hadn’t realised) wasn’t the blood baked orgy of insanity I was expecting.

Granted the doctor and nurse who delivered the children were both ghosts, but that’s hardly surprising at this point. Also the way the powerless, candlelit Murder House was contrasted in flashbacks to the light drenched hospital where Vivienne gave birth to her first child Violet was quite effective. I’m not going to say it was moving or anything, but it was surprisingly restrained, and all the better for it.

Prior to that moment, the episode  was largely taken up with ghostly wrangling over who was going to take charge on the twins when they were born.

First up was the Murder House’s first wife whose experience raising a monstrous Frankenstein goblin child appears not to have put her off babies.

Equally desperate to nab a wean were Zachary Quinto-Ghost and boyfriend who were redecorating the nursery with the intention of looking after the babies til they were a year old then smothering them so they stay cute forever, in what I believe is known as the ‘Louise Woodward’ strategy of child rearing.

This provoked a very strong reaction from Constance, who added profound homophobia to last week’s searing racism in her list of lovable Southern quirks, as well as her reiterating her desire to mother her Antichrist ‘grandbaby’.

As a result we got an almighty bitch fest between Zachary Quinto-Ghost  and Constance: probably the highlight of the series so far.

In response Constance manipulated Violet in an attempt to banish her gay baby rival. This involved using the legend of Roanoke,  which was good because that’s a great tale. Also, it was a total failure as far as banishing goes, which was quite funny.

Ultimately ZQG relinquished his plans for the baby, as he realised he and his ghost partner would be miserable  stuck together for eternity in the Murder House with or without kids. Which was just depressing really.

However he did do Violet the favour of finally pointing out that her ghostly boyfriend Tate is a horrible, school shooting, gay bashing, mother raping monster. Granted she probably should have figured all that out herself, but having finally got the knowledge she did a decent job of standing up for herself and driving away her not so perfect boyfriend.

Meanwhile the first wife was stealing away the apparently stillborn first twin, while Constance was cooing over the apparently ‘beautiful’ antichrist child.

And Vivienne…Well Vivienne was dead. Turns out giving birth to the Antichrist does not do wonders for your health.

And because she dies in the murder house, yup. She’s a ghost.

Which leaves poor old dumb as a rock Ben Harmon, living alone in the Murder House. Chances of him surviving the finale episode next week? Zero.

Weird ‘Ryan Murphy Hates Pregnancy’ moment of the week.

The term ‘alpha fetus’ is pretty much just the worst thing.

Awesome Constance moment of the week

‘The only study I know is the study of blood and pain’ she spits at Zachary Quinto- Ghost. Oh Constance, I’ll miss your mad ways.

Genuine Fright of the Week

The goblin faced thing in the basement made it’s longest apperance to date in the opening scene and it was awful. If I wanted to stare at a malformed goblin I’d tune into That Sunday Night Show on ITV1

"Ok, own up- who fed this baby helium?"

By Kate Diamond

‘For seven weeks Channel 4 filmed around the clock in a busy maternity hospital to find out what it really feels like to bring new life into the world,’ boast the opening credits.

Well, not what it really feels like. 21^st century technology is incredible and, while HDTV can accurately depict life as one of Noel Edmonds’ beard crumbs, it can’t replicate the sensation of a fully dilated cervix. And nor should it strive to.

That said, the cameras at the Clarendon Wing of Leeds General Hospital do seem to have captured the requisite mix of screaming women, gunky newborns and midwives drinking tea from comedically large mugs.

Despite the close up shots of placentae, OBEM makes for unexpectedly compelling viewing- so much so that it’s been a smash hit for Channel 4 and has recently made the obligatory jump to the US (complete with frankly awful promotional posters that make it look like a below-par Reese Witherspoon comedy).

Back here in the UK, we have down to Earth midwife Louise Holt to preside over the madness.

‘“There’s a real difference in how partners approach labour’ she narrates, by way of exposition. ‘Some are really enthusiastic and supportive. Some don’t want to know and wish they weren’t there.’

Ok Louise, got it. Classic good cop/bad cop. The rest will undoubtedly become clear from the highly edited back stories and sound bites.

In the blue corner, enter Tricia and Steven, one of the couples from last night’s episode. Steven immediately makes a play for the role of Hero Husband, being protective in a non-nauseating way and throwing around words of encouragement like ‘you’re doing super’ the way only a Yorkshireman can.

Tricia, who sustained a brain injury from an accident in her teens, and is possibly the nicest girl you’ll ever hope to meet, reciprocates with classics like ‘I’ve never pushed a baby out before.’ And, when told by a midwife ‘I’m going to put these two fingers into your vagina’, comes back with the only true and proper response of ‘Urgh!’

The husband of couple number two, back-footed before they’ve even begun, gallantly opens with ‘I can father a child from just looking at somebody’. His eyes add the ‘bow chicka wow wow’, as women of child bearing age up and down the country mentally check they took their pill this morning.

Halinka and Richard approach the birth of their fifth child with inspirational quotes including ‘wake me up when it’s out’ (him), ‘I can’t believe I’ve done this over and over. I swear to god, why can I never learn?’ (her) and ‘If we get a little girl, our son will be really gutted’ (both, as a running theme). Richard also spends a good portion of the show making blow job references with the gas and air. Classic.

There seems some disagreement to whether Halinka’s ‘instant childbirth condition’ is actually spontaneous or just fast. A passing midwife speculates her waters have probably broken. But then good to her word, she catapults a 7lb baby out while said midwife is still drying off the hand mirror. All that’s left is for the couple to enjoy this special time together, and make birth announcements to the rest of their excited family.

As her tiny new baby naps on her chest, Halinka phones her son with the wonderful news, ‘I’m sorry, it’s a girl.’ Sweet. Meanwhile Tricia, who’s also just delivered a little girl, exclaims ‘I love her!’ while blowing her nose on a bloody towel. Which, when all’s said and done, is the more audience pleasing response.

However, the true star of the show, amidst all the minute old babies, is old aged Linda. In what is meant as reassurance, Lovely Louise tells Tricia ‘you’ve got the most senior midwife ever in the world. She’s done midwifery longer than you’ve been born.’

Shown throughout, most prominently yelling ‘have you ever been constipated?’, poor Linda is merely giving Tricia a reference point on the art of pushing. Sadly she’s so old she may as well be shouting at a bookshelf from her armchair in the old folks home.  Later, Lovely Louise remarks in the staff briefing ‘Linda deserves double pay in there today. She has been absolutely marvellous.’

Any implied reference to the state of NHS pensions remains unsaid.

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One Born Every Minute is on Wednesdays, C4, 9pm. You can catch up on 4od here

"Stop having fun! Think of the consequences! Dear God, won't someone please think of the consequences?"

Much like the teenagers it seeks to portray, when Skins is good it’s exciting, imaginative and rollicking good fun. But when it’s bad it’s so stupid you want to string it up from a tree and smash it in the face with a cricket bat while shouting ‘YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW THE REAL WORLD WORKS’.

Ahem, not that we’re condoning that kind of parenting of course.

At its peak back in season two it was one of the best dramas on British TV with rich, complex characters being whirled around inside a furious storm of a plot.

But that was then and we’re now six series in. While replacing the cast every second series has undoubtedly extended the show’s lifespan, it’s also meant that the successful template of the first two seasons has been replicated too many times, leading to increasingly diminishing returns.

The second generation had some strong characters but a plot arc that didn’t work at all. However, this time around it seems the consistency of the characters has been sacrificed to make exciting things happen.

The season opens with the gang in Morocco for a fantasy of a holiday, with all the drug taking, sex and raving you’d expect. Interestingly, it appears that there aren’t actually any Moroccans in Morocco but whatever, you’re not watching Skins for a concise reconstruction of the Arab Spring demonstrations.

Things take a traditionally dramatic turn for the worse later on, but the whole conceit requires the audience to ignore pretty much everything that happened to this characters previously. A key plot point of season five was the overly controlling parents of several of the main characters, but suddenly they’re absolutely fine with their teenage offspring racing around the north African desert on scooters like they’re filming a particularly crap Top Gear special.

Most worryingly Frankie, who was the main character last year, has apparently morphed from a painfully shy, androgynous weirdo to a Kate Moss-esque jaded sex predator in the space of about six weeks.

This change seems to have been made so she can leave behind her freshly acquired boyfriend to elope with a fantastically creepy older drug dealer, thus necessitating a frantic car chase and crash that lands another character in a coma.

Those developments will surely power the narrative for the rest of the season, but it’s still damn poor writing to entirely rejig your main character just so viewers can witness a car chase.

However it has to be said that the car crash was pretty exciting, and it was good that the action then immediately shifted back to the grim old UK, specifically to a rather miserable bunch of Skins who were back at college and clearly ravaged by the emotional hangover of their Moroccan holiday.

The aftermath of the party is a theme this show has often turned to but it still works, because in a weird way it actually has a fairly strong streak of morality running through it like the lettering in a stick of rock. In this case, said lettering would say ‘Don’t run off with a drug dealer’. Or possibly ‘Morocco! Come for the scenery, stay for the substandard medical care’.

Sure these kids party and shag and behave like little monsters ’til the dawn, but there are always consequences. Even if they don’t deserve them.

In fact if you sat a teenager down and made them watch a five-and-a-bit series marathon of the show, it wouldn’t be surprising if they concluded the consequences of a Skins-esque party lifestyle would be getting hit by a bus and crippled, dying of brain cancer, having your parents die, being deported, suffering profound schizophrenia or being beaten to death by a doctor.

And with all that baggage behind it, it’s a minor miracle the show is still watchable at all, let alone that it retains that zing of excitement that still somehow makes it feel unique.

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Skins is on Mondays, E4, 10pm. You can catch up here

Related posts: Skins Series 6 Preview

She made the hat out of some old forks and a discarded crisp packet

By Gina

What with the impending economic meltdown and stuff, it’s hardly surprising that SuperScrimpers, the money-saving tips show from Channel 4, has been recommissioned. Soon everyone will be so skint they’ll have to construct shoes from empty yoghurt pots and use rusty old hubcaps as plates whether they like it or not.

Picking up on what seems to be the trend for a retro ‘make do and mend’ aesthetic, SuperScrimpers lurches between decent, sensible financial advice and the altogether weirder world of ‘top tips’ normally purveyed by gauche women’s magazines and parodied relentlessly by Viz.

The problem with a lot of these tips is that they either assume a ready supply of things that normal people just don’t have, or worse, they have their sense of monetary worth completely askew. Disappointingly, SuperScrimpers kicks off with examples of both of these.

First, there’s Claire, who offers a tip for unblocking a sink without splashing out on a chemical cleaner – you just ‘pinch the dog’s tennis ball’, she says. Note that this requires a dog and/or a supply of tennis balls, both of which are more expensive to own than a bottle of sink unblocker. It isn’t worth going into the tip itself, but let’s just say it is unlikely to put Dyno-Rod out of business any time soon.

After that comes Leo, a smug bloke in a green t-shirt who offers an ingenious solution to the frankly uncommon problem of what to do if you like your gin with fresh lime every so often, but don’t want to keep throwing bits of lime away. Leo’s tip for this is to – gasp! – put the unused lime in the freezer. Presumably he was actually paid money for this glaringly obvious idea. But surely, if you’re so hard up you worry about wasting lime slices, you could always cut back on the gin habit. Just a thought.

Interspersed with all of this madness is the plight of The Earles, a family who can’t seem to do a week’s shop without throwing half of it away, usually because the carrots are slightly wilted, or possibly because they fancy some TV exposure on a programme about how to save money.

The simple solution to this would be to shop more frequently and buy less stuff, or take a leaf out of Smug Leo’s book and freeze the lot. But that wouldn’t make very good telly, so instead they’re challenged to spend just £50 on a weekly shop.

A survivor of rationing is wheeled in to remind them that the austerity era was really about clever recycling of leftovers rather than dubious uses for powdered egg. She helps Mrs Earles concoct something called ‘Scrimpers Sausage Surprise’ – which sounds filthy, frankly, but goes down a treat.

Gem, (who later says that her mother is ‘surgically attached to charity shops’ – sounds awkward) has a segment which shows girls how to do wacky nails on a budget. This uses about four different colours of Barry M and, unusually, a felt tip eyeliner. It’s got to be (slightly) cheaper than going to a salon, but ultimately it’s still eyeliner – it’s designed to come off again. If felt tips are kosher, perhaps going goth and simply doing your nails with a permanent black marker is a better option.

But it’s not all total rubbish – the formidable Mrs Moneypenny has some tips that are actually helpful, such as advice on extended warranty for appliances and a breakdown of car insurance types. Useful but pretty boring, huh? So let’s cut to the money shot: a return to the Earles to see whether they’ve changed their ways.

They proudly open up their kitchen bin for the camera. ‘This would normally be full’o food!’, Mrs Earles beams triumphantly. There are no leftovers, but astonishingly, it contains a load of stuff which could normally be recycled! Yep, there’s a bog roll inside, and a cereal packet! No mention of this glaring hypocrisy is made.

Perhaps their recycling bin has been a victim of one of the other tips and is currently being used as a coffee table, or something.

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Superscrimpers is on Channel 4, Mondays, 8pm

You can follow Gina on Twitter, where she goes by the name of @brokenbiros

Pat Sharp's mullet left to present its own programme after just one series of Fun House.

By Matthew Laidlow.

If you gave someone the opportunity to live in the nineties instead of the present day, chances are they’d pick 2012. I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in an age where technology can be slotted up your nostril or where there’s an upmarket KFC (Nando’s), on every corner?

But though the past is unappealingly full of brick sized mobile phones, Global Hypercolour t-shirts and endless, hideous Celine Dion hits, surely you’d revisit that period if you happen to be the owner of a small child?

Everybody knows that when the kiddywinks come home after learning pointless mathematical theories that they’ll never use in later life, they’ll want some light relief. But flick on the TV for your munchkins these days and what do you find? Nothing. That’s right, an absolute void of entertainment for children. At time of writing, this is the BBC’s post-school offering:

4pm – All Over The Place – A show dedicated to finding strange and random places in the UK.

Brilliant, just what kids want to see, a boiled down travel show that’s interesting for the first thirty seconds when they witness fascinating segments such as the air guitar world championships.

4.30pm – Helen’s Polar Challenge For Sports Relief – If children knew that our license fee was essentially funding this women’s holiday that’s packaged as charity work to raise funds to save a squirrel that’s stuck inside a crisp packet, they’d be shocked.

Now, before you all start yelling and shouting the obvious of “OH MY GOD, IT’S SO CLEAR THAT YOU DON’T HAVE CHILDREN,” you’d be right. But honestly, I have your best intentions at heart and I’m only thinking of your precious offspring.

While the BBC does offer some TV that you could conceivably entertain a child with (if they like other countries, that is), just look at what ITV are broadcasting in the same timeslot:

4pm-5pm – The Hungry Sailors – Jesus H. Christ on a stick, it’s another bloody cookery show. But the difference this time is that they travel via boat. Are they dressed like Captain Pugwash? Like bugger are they. Do kids have any interest in how to make an apple cake? No. They’d prefer to be cramming it down their gob.

OK, you could argue that kids telly has migrated to freeview: to Ceebeebees (which sounds more like a 70s prog rock/disco group than a channel), or, if you’re willing to fork out for a subscription- Nick Jr or Cartoon Network. But that seems unfair to people who can’t afford a freeview box or satellite dish. Plus, it somehow saps the joy from children’s TV when it’s segregated to its own channel and forced to sit at the back of the proverbial telly bus.

Back in the day there were so many iconic TV shows it was impossible to keep up with them. Everybody wanted to be on Fun House, not just because you could mock Pat Sharp’s mullet or feel confused in your special parts when you saw the twins due to your hormones not being fully developed, but because the show was what any child wanted: fun. Who wouldn’t love to complete in something that they couldn’t do at home? It was a game! AND a race! A real wacky place.

Plus there were prizes to be won.

Even deaf children could comfortably watch TV without a patronising sign language interpreter. ZZZap! was a visual comic that brought to life a batch of recurring characters and featured everything from DIY magic to sketches. At no point were any words uttered, granted some background music might have been used but storylines were simple enough to grasp. These short bursts of variety guaranteed positive viewing figures, hence the nine years that it ran.

Other treats included the truly wonderful Knightmare, Get Your Own Back and Jungle Run (not to become confused with Keith Chegwin’s The Naked Jungle). And when you say ‘yes, but do we parents really want to have our channels invaded by sword wielding teens or Tony Robinson pretending to be the Sheriff of Nottingham’, ask yourself this- would you rather watch well scripted children’s sitcoms such as My Parents Are Aliens, or bore yourself with aging repeats of Midsommer Murders?

And don’t get us started on Saturday morning TV. Live and Kicking and SM:TV are sorely missed. That argument is for another day.

Ok, fine. Maybe Alex isn't really a 47 year old postman.

Skins returns to our screens tonight. Amazingly, the show is now in it’s sixth season and third generation of impossibly good-looking young scamps.

If like me, you persist in risking being placed on the sex offenders register by continuing to watch the madcap adventures of these teenagers in trouble, we can exclusively reveal what season six will feature.

Ok, fine, it’s largely made up:  but after six series the plots aren’t exactly hard to predict.

Episode 1 –  Everyone

It’s a long-standing Skins tradition that every character over the age of twenty is a complete idiot. That looks set to continue this season as the main characters’ parents are apparently very happy for their teenage offspring to traipse off to Morocco for a hugely debauched holiday. You’d think the Arab Spring had never happened, which to be fair, in the alternate Skins-iverse it may not have. What we can be sure of is that this episode will feature drug taking, some sort of beach based rave and a terrible sea-related accident resulting in much hysterical pouting.

Episode 2 – Rich

Last year Rich was a grumpy metal-head who was redeemed by his relationship with good-natured ballet dancer Grace. However their bond was nearly thwarted by her devilishly David Cameron-esque headmaster father, played with much glee by Chris Addison, and named entirely unambiguously Professor Blood.

We can be sure that Professor Blood will be back to his old tricks in this episode, scheming to crush Rich’s hope and dreams of happiness with his daughter. Just like David Cameron wants to crush the nations dreams, RIGHT KIDS? POLITICS!

Episode 3 – Alex

Alex is a new Skin, appearing for the first time this season. In a shocking break with tradition I can exclusively reveal he is a 47 year old postman who is addicted to Andrew’s Liver Salts. Isn’t it a bit weird that he’s hanging out with these teenagers, you may ask? Well, who are you to ask? You just don’t get it because you are SO old.

Episode 4 – Franky

Last year Franky was the androgynous new girl who went from being a bullied outsider to best friends with her former bullies.  This year her metamorphosis will continue as she turns into a vicious bully herself. Just like Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls.

Episode 5 – Mini

Mini will also undergo radical changes this season. Whereas last year she was the Queen Bee Bitch, desperate to maintain her popular status, this year she’ll become the mechanic for a wacky talking car, Just like Lindsay Lohan in Herbie: Fully Loaded.

Episode 6 – Nick

Nick’s Character arc last season saw him abandon his role as all conquering captain of the Rugby team in exchange for a hard partying lifestyle, which led to him sleeping with older women he met on the street. A venture into fully-fledged prostitution to support his burgeoning drug habit looks inevitable.

Episode 7 – Alo

Alo is the bouncy ginger west country bumpkin with a heart of gold and a penchant for huge stupidity. He’s found a way to channel his energies more productively this time around by forming a band with best friend Rich. However that friendship is tested when his magnetic stage presence means he is offered the chance to replace Danny Jones in a reformed McFly after half that band is killed in a plane crash. Can his love for his pal overcome the pull of Rock Stardom?

Episode 8 – Liv

A hard living good time girl with a hidden sadness last season, in this very special episode she will leave those blues behind to evolve in a new lifeform: a Party Angel. Consuming only MDMA powder and being able to instantly transport from nightclub to nightclub on her ‘party wings’, she will leave the gang behind to start a new life in Europe’s party capital: Rotherham.

Episode 9 – Mini and Franky

In this penultimate episode the long simmering tension between outsider Franky and popular Mini rise to the surface. To the shock of everyone it is revealed that they are in fact the same person, being two sides of a spilt personality. Just like Lindsay Lohan in I Know Who Killed Me.

Episode 10 – Everyone

As is inevitable in Skins, this generation will bow out with a tragic death. But who will it be? Could it be Alex the new arrival who no one cares about? Yes. Yes it could.

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Skins is on Monday nights, E4, 10pm, starting tonight.

"Here come the gulls" (C) John Downer Productions - Photographer: Michael W. Richards

We’ve been spoilt for choice by nature documentaries in recent years: Life, Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, Wet Planet: the list goes on. And they’re all fantastic, whatever the haters might say.

But how do other BBC nature documentaries hold their own against these stunning Attenborough heavyweights? Well, by inventing imaginative and experimental ways to get better footage, of course.

As cameras have become smaller and tougher, the potential for wildlife film-makers has vastly increased: they can now get excellent footage without having to send the work-experience kid into a tiger’s lair. “Sorry Brian- you’ve drawn the short straw again”.

The trend for hidden cameras started with Lions: Spy in the Den in 2000. LSITD (as its affectionately known. By me) introduced us to bouldercam: a mobile camera hidden inside a moving rock that could sneak into the heart of a pride.

Apparently the lion isn’t a naturally suspicious creature, as evidenced by their habit of replying to phishing emails from the King of Nigeria.

Lions aren’t terribly hard to get close to anyway, as anyone who’s ever been on safari knows, but nevertheless it was a big hit and got some great footage of lion cubs attempting to destroy an expensive hidden camera. It spawned a series of similar documentaries, more recently the wonderful Tiger: Spy in the Jungle where elephants were trained to carry cameras close to the elusive animals (proving that species isn’t a barrier when it comes to unpaid BBC internships) and, of course, Polar Bear: Spy on the Ice narrated by Lovely David Tennant™.

That was even more of a hit, so it comes as no surprise that Lovely David Tennant™ has been chosen to narrate Earthflight, a documentary that mixes standard nature documentary footage with shots taken with cameras mounted on the backs of wild birds. Bouldercam eat your heart out.

Unfortunately, the angle of the cameras and the nature of birds means a lot of this footage is made up of shaky shots of the not-too-distant ground with a big, wobbly bird head in the middle. Although the camera can also be panned to get a shot of the wing tilting up and down, that kind of thing.

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to be some kind of hamster-pilot riding a pet condor, wonder no more.

However, for all the wobbles its still exhilarating: flight has always been a dream of mankind. A nice dream, that is, not the kind where you suddenly find yourself naked in the school canteen seconds before an exam that you haven’t revised for.

Slightly more inspiring is the ‘flying alongside’ footage, although POLAR BEAR CUB ALERT this is filmed with trained, hand-reared birds rather than wild ones. However, this soon starts to resemble a travel documentary with a set of avian hosts: snow geese take us on a tour of New York, brown pelicans show us round San Francisco, some common cranes fly over Venice (‘By ‘eck, it’s a bit hot, innit?’  ’I wonder if they do chips anywhere?’). At times, you feel you should be giving them a tip.

For all that those scenes make for truly breathtaking cinematography- it’s as if nature itself was specially designed for people with HD TVs- the series is probably at its best when it ditches the gimmicks in favour of traditional storytelling. In last night’s episode, we watched as a Patagonian condor tried to teach its ungainly child to fly…by shoving it off a 200ft drop. Tough love, etc.

Luckily it doesn’t die (that would have been a bit awkward) and the multiple shots of it soaring away as it learnt how to ride the thermals were truly wonderful.

It had better get better at flying pretty soon though, if only to learn to escape roving BBC television crews intent on strapping a webcam to its back.

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Earthflight is on Thursdays, 8pm, BBC1. You can catch up on iPlayer here

"Spidergoat, Spidergoat, does whatever a spidergoat does..."

“We’ve found a way to take life and radically redesign it”, says Guardian Science Bloke™ Dr Adam Rutherford at the beginning of Playing God.

And boy, he wasn’t joking.

Forget Spiderpig, Adam introduced us to Spidergoats, the weirdest mashup since Grease vs Dr Dre.

Disappointingly to anyone who hoped they’d be wearing a red and black mask and solving crimes, it turns out they look exactly like regular goats, but with a spider gene that causes silk to form in their milk.

Still, pretty impressive. But if you thought Spidergoats were weird, that was just the beginning: the unsettling canapé before the far more alarming main course. At least goats and spiders already exist, it was just a case of smooshing them together and chopping off any spare legs. But in 2008 scientists (or ‘boffins’, if you read The Sun) created the very first entirely synthetic life form..wait for it…called ‘Synthia’.

Ahaha.

As we explored these – admittedly impressive- developments, Rutherford kept banging on about how cool and exciting it all is, how thrilling, how full of potential etc. In the hands of these enthusiastic scientists DNA becomes a toy: Lego blocks to be pulled apart and put back together to form biocircuits, living computers, terrifying semi-mechanised lobstercrabs with laser eyes…that sort of thing. But there was little exploration of the ethics behind manipulating living organisms.

In Cambridge, we’re introduced to a team who took a protein from squids that make them reflective, built a ‘biocircuit’ or cell factory which could produce said protein in a lab (what, no goats?) and used it to create a substance that changes colour when you breathe on it. However, the advances aren’t based on their own research, they built on discoveries made by other scientists who’d made their research open source.

Rutherford is thoroughly thrilled, but surely it’s also a tiny bit worrying:  doesn’t open source science mean there’s a chance that the speed of these developments- mixed with the excitement of ‘hey, look what we can do! It’s a hoover that’s also a cat!’- might overtake the ‘um, should we really be doing this?’ factor.

And even if you hate cats (and goats), there’s also the question about who’s really benefiting from these developments. Adam visits a big corporation in California who’ve industrialised synthetic biology. They’ve created a cell that can synthesize diesel: obviously a great thing to a degree…but this diesel will still produce CO2. Nevertheless, the company are ramping up production in an attempt to create a billion litres of the atmosphere-clogging stuff.

‘Crikey, that’s amazing!’ says Rutherford. ‘Wow!’

To be fair, after driving away in a bio-diesel fuelled car, he takes to the beach to do some soul searching about how far synthetic biology should be allowed to go, although he’s disparaging at the same time, saying how ‘Hollywood thinks they’ll escape and crawl through drains into your cappuccino’.

Of course the public can be reactionary (and a bit thick) and it’s very important that science documentaries don’t pander to that, but the Top Gear style approach of Playing God seemed to focus a bit too much on the ‘wow, gosh, ace, cool’ side of things and not enough on ‘should we really be creating a dog made entirely from boobs?’.

He then headed off to talk to another bloke (very bloke-heavy programme, this) about the potential for bio-terrorism (low: apparently it’s much easier to go and buy the ingredients for a nail bomb from a hardware store than get a PhD in Advanced Genetic Manipulation. Thanks for the tip!).

Again, that seemed to miss the point a bit. Instead of addressing the ethics of manipulating life, he just focusses on the potential consequences.

Of course it’s wonderful that we can amend a cell so it can protect astronauts from UV radiation: but on the whole it seems like Big Industry are the people most likely to reap the potential benefits. Messing up goats to make cheap silk seems a rather base use of the amazing opportunity synthetic biology offers.

And it’s likely that big corporations will take things to their profit-driven limits, as ever.  We already use live jellyfish as ornaments: it’s only a matter of time before they’re made to glow in the dark=  living lava lamp!

Actually, that’s my idea. You can’t have it. *files patent*

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Horizon is on BBC2, Tuesdays at 9.30pm. You can catch up here

"So, you just add the enriched uranium and let it simmer. But not boil! Never let it boil!"

Heston Blumenthal is the Willy Wonka of the culinary world. Or possibly some kind of chemical-addled 15th century alchemist. If anyone’s capable of turning lead to gold, it’s Heston…and by ‘lead’ we mean ‘biscuits’. And by ‘gold’ we mean ‘some kind of souffle with exploding jam in it’.

He’s the sort of person who hires a ‘development chef’, calls him Jocky and insists Jocky cooks with a pneumatic drill and a cement mixer.

But would you like to cook like him? Most people don’t have nearly enough test tubes and bunsen burners in their kitchen. And it’s hard to convince the kids that edible wallpaper is an acceptable substitute for fish fingers…although mashed potato volcanoes with erupting gravy would probably be a hit.

Clearly aware that his methods are a bit, well, mental, Heston’s toned down his recipes accordingly for this series. In last night’s episode, he focussed on chocolate. The first recipe (chocolate truffles) was about as simple as it gets: melt chocolate with butter, leave to set, scoop out the ganache with a melon baller and drop into cocoa to dust. Voilà: you never have to give those grasping sods at Lindt another penny of your precious cash.

He then expands on that recipe to create an ‘exploding gateau’. Aha, great! That’ll be more like it. It’ll probably contain enriched uranium. Or possibly a combination of diet coke and mentos….or…

Oh, it’s got a popping candy base. Never mind.

He attempts to make it a bit more exciting by freezing the cake and then coating it with warm melted oil and chocolate dust using an industrial paint sprayer: but at the end of the day it’s still just a chocolate cake with a fizzy foundation.

And that’s the problem with How to Cook Like Heston. Obviously it’s entirely impractical to cook like Heston unless you have a centrifuge in your kitchen. And possibly a forge. He’s an exuberant Harry Hill clone with a penchant for making paperclip ice cream and gravy jam.

Unfortunately if you take that away he’s just another telly chef, albeit an accomplished one with a gift for thinking outside the box and combining unusual flavours.

There’s definitely been an attempt to compromise here: the amazing chocolate flowerpot tiramisu with edible soil definitely had the Heston magic. But we want more magic! Bigger thrills! A rocket made from ham! Dark matter mousse!

We proles don’t want to cook like him- it looks like far too much trouble. We want him to make reusable omelette kites with licorice string while we slump on the sofa with a Pot Noodle, gaping vicariously…

Or is that just me?

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How to Cook Like Heston is on Channel 4, Wednesdays, 8pm. You can catch up on 4od here

No sooner do you lock your pregnant wife away in a madhouse than three hot female ghosts desperately try to have sex with you.

Clearly all lady spooks really want is ghoulish coitus with the world’s worst therapist.

But although Ben’s ghostly maid, his ghostly mistress and ghostly Mena Suvari really pull out all the stops to seduce him, none of them actually manage it.  Though obviously- as this show has absolutely no restraint- we get to see him fantasizing about having sex with each of them.

This American Horror Story after all: if there isn’t something monstrous or sexual (ideally a monster having sexual sex) on screen, it’s a failure.

First up is the ghostly two-faced maid who continues to try and seduce Ben even though she’s made it very clear she hates him.  However Ben Harmon manages to resist, even when she tries to entice him using ghostly Mena Suvari as bait in a not-at-all-gratuitous lesbian flytrap.

Ghostly Mena Suvari, it turns out, is actually the Black Dahlia. Yes, that Black Dahlia: the famous unsolved LA murder and a film that I refuse to watch because it stars Josh Hartnett, a man whose eyes are far too small from him to be an actor (in any rational world).

It turns out that the Black Dahlia is a ghost because she went to the murder house in 1947 to get some dental work done by Jeremy from Sports Night. And he raped, murdered and dismembered her.

Oh Jeremy from Sports Night, you scamp! I knew Natalie was too good for you (you should go and buy Sports Night on DVD, by the way, it’s pretty great. Not a lot of ghost sex, I’ll grant you. But still pretty great).

Nice as it is to see Jeremy from Sports Night (a.k.a Joshua Malina) again, the whole spectral seduction/Black Dahlia subplot is pointless unless you really like seeing Mena Suvari acting like a complete idiot. Ground, which I think we can agree, she has covered fairly well in the past.

Far more relevant to the ongoing plot are the actions of the third attractive ghost trying to woo Ben Harmon: his dead college student mistress Hayden.

Surprisingly- given that up to this point he’s shown the self control of a baboon whose eaten it’s own body weight in fermented fruit, he rejects her too.

Terribly hurt by this, Hayden makes the mistake of seducing Constance’s toyboy/dog walker Travis. Not only does she seduce him, in fact, but she ends up killing him.

This was a rather huge mistake on her part because Constance had a masterplan all figured out. Realizing that Vivienne Harmon’s Antichrist baby was sired by her ghostly son,  she’s hatched a diabolical plan to steal the devil child, marry Travis and play happy satanic families.

She won’t be happy that her plan hasn’t come together the way she wanted. That’s great for us, because seeing Jessica Lange lose her shit makes for great TV. And just that prospect is enough to make me look forward to the next episode more than any other this season.

Weird ‘Ryan Murphy Hates Pregnancy’ moment of the week.

Vivenne’s twins have different fathers, apparently this is technically possible, but it’s still weird. Even leaving aside the fact one of them is the Antichrist.

Awesome Constance moment of the week.

So many. But her response to her furious lover raising his hand to her takes some beating. “The last man who thought he could strike me came to a very unpleasant end,” she hisses. “And he was a man.”

Genuine Fright of the Week

There was some unpleasantly bloody surgery, but a rather sedate week on this front.

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American Horror Story Series Blog: Episode One
American Horror Story Series Blog: Episode Two
American Horror Story Series Blog: Episode Three
American Horror Story Series Blog: Episode Four
American Horror Story Series Blog: Episode Five
American Horror Story Series Blog: Episode Six
American Horror Story Series Blog: Episode Seven
American Horror Story Series Blog: Episode Eight