Running commentary improves a sitcom no end, finds Sam Wollaston
Pete isn't doing very well in Pete Versus Life (Channel 4). You'd probably have to say that, on balance, life was winning. Pete wanted to be a sports journalist in the first series, remember? Now he's going for a job as a dog walker.
He gets the job, but it doesn't go well. On their first outing, Glynn, a lovely yellow labrador, is flattened on the London north circular. Things look up briefly when Gracja, his parents' new Polish helper, tells Pete she's going to "how you say, screw your brains". But even that doesn't go to plan ? ie happen.
It's fairly standard kind of sitcom fodder. Except for the fact that there are two sports pundits doing a running commentary on Pete's life. As if it was a sports event. And that lifts it, turns it into something quite imaginative and original. It's the kind of idea you can imagine creators George Jeffries and Bert Tyler-Moore coming up with over a beer or two, thinking "genius", then sleeping on it and having serious doubts in the morning ? like why would sports commentators be commentating on some bloke's life?
Someone had the courage to commission it, though. Viewers like it: enough watched for this second series to happen. I like it, too. It works, weirdly. And Rafe Spall is nice as Pete. A bit hopeless, but likable. He would be really, being Timothy Spall's son. Hasn't dentistry improved, though, in just one generation?
Ice Road Truckers (Channel 5) is in India: Delhi, then north to the foothills of the Himalayas. And these Canadian lorry drivers can't hack it. They're getting angry at the Indian style of driving. Like when they drift from one lane to the other without looking, and overtake on blind corners; and then there's the fact that some of these road users are cows. And elephants. It is mad, but getting angry isn't going to get them anywhere, apart from into trouble. Believe me, I actually have considerable experience of driving in the subcontinent. He says, colonially.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/oct/22/pete-versus-life-ice-road-review
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