12 Books That Changed The World (ITV1); Doctor Who (BBC1); The Incredible Journey Of Mary Bryant (ITV1): Melvyn Bragg in a sex shop and at a football match.
Bragg wearing a flap cap and drinking a pint of beer in a pub. Bragg battling with an umbrella in the wind outside the still-not-completed Wembley Stadium, eventually abandoning his weather protection with the comment, "Oh, I'm going to get drenched, bugger it."
12 Books That Changed The World took desperate measures to illustrate a wordy subject, encompassing opinions from such diverse people as Jim Al-Khalili, head of the theoretical nuclear physics group at Surrey University, and Sam Roddick, of Coco de Mer erotic boutique.
Bragg visited the sex shop to deliver the facts about Marie Stopes' tome Married Love, which argued that women had as much right to sexual satisfaction as men.
Ignorance meant they didn't get the most out of their sex life, partly due to what Bragg called "men's shortcomings" - not a reference to lack of size but their failure to know their way round a women's body to bring her maximum pleasure. He then moved on to what was described as the world's second most popular activity after sex. This was football, subject of another of Bragg's choices, The First Rule Book Of The Football Association.
He played at being a football commentator to introduce this book, before watching the first match played in 1863 under the new rules. This involved modern players recreating the game. Doctor Who would just have jumped in the Tardis and travelled back to watch the original game.
Instead he - now looking like David Tennant rather than Christopher Ecclestone - and Rose (Billie Piper) journeyed five billion years into the future, only to encounter old adversary Cassandra, who consists of a face in a piece of stretched skin.
Tennant has swiftly settled into the doctor's skin and will, I reckon, make as good a Who as his predecessor.
Piper may be a lads' mag favourite but Cassandra wasn't entirely happy with the look when she took over her body. "Oh my god, I'm a chav," she exclaimed on viewing her new appearance.
ITV1's time machine whizzed back to the 18th Century, first to Cornwall to meet the heroine of The Incredible Journey Of Mary Bryant, a rollicking two-parter about a young woman transported to a penal colony in Australia.
The voyage was a mini-series in itself as the convicts were squashed below decks (and I don't mean by their tight trousers) and starved of food, if not sex as Mary arrived with a baby in her arms.
There's something about Mary, as played by Romola Garai, that makes men lust after her. She marries a fellow convict but is soon slipping away into the bed of dashing lieutenant Jack Davenport. She needs to distract him while her husband and the other convicts prepare to escape on the governor's cutter.
The story moves at a fair old lick, evidenced when we returned from a commercial break to be told the news by Mary that "we survived another three years". Presumably what happened during that time will be revealed in the director's cut.
Published: 17/04/2006
