Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Tonight's TV highlights

Attenborough and the Giant Egg | Jamie's Dream School | The Model Agency | My Lion Family | OMG! With Peaches Geldof | Storyville: Sex, Death and the Gods

Attenborough and the Giant Egg
8pm, BBC2

David Attenborough's Indian summer of TV and radio documentaries has lately been one of British broadcasting's understated treats. Here, he returns to Madagascar, which he first visited in 1960 for Zoo Quest. Thanks to the island's isolation, it once supported strange creatures unlike any seen elsewhere, but its habitats are under threat from human expansion. Symbolic of this process is an enormous egg that Attenborough acquired on his last visit to Madagascar, an egg laid by an elephant bird ? an ostrich-like species that's now extinct.

Jonathan Wright

Jamie's Dream School
9pm, Channel 4

You've seen the trailers ? yes, this is the one where Jamie Oliver tries to get a bunch of GCSE dropouts to pay attention in class by hiring David Starkey, Rolf Harris and Jazzie B as their new teachers. In a world where Toby Young can set up his own school, this isn't such an outlandish idea, and we'll definitely learn something, even if it's just that this teaching lark is harder than it looks. "We're so used to people being interested in what we talk about," notes Jamie wryly, as he observes Simon Callow getting shouted down by 20 teenage scrotes. "They don't give a shit." Unmissable.

Sam Richards

The Model Agency
10pm, Channel 4

"They want a girl with a beautiful face and a boy's body," explains one of Premier's model bookers tonight, in response to the unrealistic demands of some of their clients. "You can't shave their bones." Much like the fashion industry itself, this documentary series is fascinating and horrifying in equal measure. For every girl on the verge of making it as a catwalk superstar, there's a catalogue model being told her thighs are too fat.

Rebecca Nicholson

My Lion Family
8pm, Nat Geo Wild

My Lion Family is shot in the private South African reserve of Kevin Richardson, who has developed an unusually intimate and relaxed relationship with the 38 lions who live on his property. The subtitle of tonight's episode ? "Trouble In The Pride" ? works on several levels, as the human economic pressures on the park cause rifts among its leonine inhabitants. The park cannot afford more cubs, so the female lions are on contraceptives, and so the males are consequently restless ? and a restless male lion is more than a handful. To complicate matters further, the hyenas are getting uppity. Andrew Mueller

OMG! With Peaches Geldof
9pm, ITV2

OMG! It's Peaches Geldof. She'll be hosting a new, six-part magazine-style show! This show is all about OMG! moments! OMG! She'll be speaking to real people with unusual lifestyles! OMG! Topics will range from relationships, sex, and behavioural issues! OMG! We can expect vampires, cougars and cheaters to be guests on this show! OMG! Each show will boast a celebrity guest who will proffer an opinion and tell us an OMG! moment story! OMG! Prepare to say OMG!

Candice Carty-Williams

Storyville: Sex, Death And
The Gods
9pm, BBC4

Another chance to see this gripping but depressing film, in which Beeban Kidron ? director of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and one Bridget Jones film, among much else ? visits India to illuminate the illegal but still practised cult of the devadasi. Essentially, this is a legitimised system of trading girls as indentured concubines. It is difficult to overstate the wretchedness of the interviews with people whose poverty is so complete that selling their daughters into sexual slavery has become an option. AM


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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/mar/02/tonights-tv-jamies-dream-school-attenborough

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