Back behind the box where i belong

Newly paupered from my stint in the Big Smoke, I found it surprisingly easy to slide back into the old work – food – TV – bed continuum last week, as I refocused by retina’s and jumped aboard H.M.S Blinky to sail through to the weekend abyss.

First port of call was Jamie at Home (Tuesdays C4, 8pm) to watch the naked chef go feral in the back garden of his Essex mansion. Looking like he had had a few too many turkey twizzlers, a slighty rotund Jamie Oliver once again tore, mushed, dolloped and lovely jublied his way through a series of recipes designed to get the best out of “Mother Nature.”

On the menu this week was Barbeque, and Jamie demonstrated some interesting variations on the craft smoking Langoustines and Razor Clams in an upturned Pirex bowl over a grill, and testing out an antique spit roast with a large hunk of dripping, blistering, mouth-watering pig.

This was no Lidl-burgers-on-a-disposable-in-the-park affair, and as wave after wave of sizzling, blackened meat came off the barbie and straight into Jamie’s jabbering mouth, I couldn’t help but feel like the little git was taunting me, the Glasgow anti-summer having all but extinguished any hopes of having even a primitive variation on this classic feast this year

Annoying as he often is however, Jamie Oliver does offer some practical advice and he has a way of making cooking seem like a less precise and more everyman affair than some of his contemporaries, and this series isn’t a bad stab at demonstrating this ethos. Gone is the crusading character of some of his earlier efforts, with a greater focus on the food than whatever social ill he is attempting to cook away on that particular week. Gone too, curiously, are people. Save from the occasional appearance of a bemused gardener, Jamie is largely alone, delivering his cooking tips to an unseen presence just off camera, (an irritating habit) devoid of the family party feel of some of his earlier shows.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing (I feel like I know Gordon Ramsey’s kids better than my cousins) but it does lend a slightly melancholic air to the cheeky chappy at times.

Later in the week BBC 2 proved a suitable place to drop anchor with the return of Saxondale, (Thursday BBC, 9:30pm) Steve Coogan’s character driven sitcom about an aging pest-control rocker coming to terms with suburban domestication. Reluctant as I am to give advice, I would like to offer a quick tip: Never attempt to watch the first episode of series two of Saxondale with three girls who have been drinking cider in the sun for a good part of the day. Lacerating my viewing pleasure with shrieks of “That’s _ out of _” every time a new character came on the screen, it was at times difficult to hear through the din and adequately assess Coogan’s latest offering to a degree which you, Dear Reader, should have come to expect by now.

As such, I’ll keep the champagne on ice and hold back the dogs for another week. A closing line did suggest that this could be a grower however; when a downcast Saxondale is roused from his misery by an invitation to party with the guys, his wife asks him what she should do with his dinner. “Put it by the microwave – I’ll heat it up lay-ter” he drawls as the van screeches away, holding a beer in one hand, and making a horn sign with the other. Amazing (possibly.)

The week ended ship shape with the announcement by Channel 4 that it would be freeing up around 29 hours of schedule in January by cancelling Celebrity Big Brother as well as cutting adrift some its more mindless pap to instigate a “creative renewal.”

The programmer plausibly cited the so-called Jade Goody race row and a reluctance of celebrities to appear on its show as a few of its reasons, and it will be interesting to see what they come up with to fill the gap. With most remotely intelligent programmes now farmed out to More 4 however, I wouldn’t be surprised if How clean is your Brat Camp topped the bill.