The War Of The Worlds
Rating: 
Michael McIntyre’s Big Show
Rating: 
Great Scott, Carruthers! I can’t look, it’s too horrible. Those blood-sucking tripod monsters laying waste to the Home Counties aren’t Martians at all. They’re… metaphors!
Already weighted down with worries about feminism and gay rights in the Edwardian era, The War Of The Worlds (BBC1) suffered a complete nervous breakdown in its final episode and became Attack Of The Guilt-Ridden Lefties.
Our hero George (Rafe Spall) goggled in revulsion as a three-legged crab from the Red Planet slurped the life out of a matronly Surrey lady, all blue rinse and clenched vowels.
The War Of The Worlds on BBC1 suffered a complete nervous breakdown in its final episode and became Attack Of The Guilt-Ridden Lefties. Pictured: Amy played by Eleanor Tomlinson and George played by Rafe Spall
‘Don’t you think this could be our fault, Englishmen?’ he shrieked at his stuffy brother Frederick (Rupert Graves). ‘What if this is punishment?’
Frederick had just made a stiff-upper-lip speech, citing the inspirational example of the Chief Scout himself, Lord Baden-Powell.
To any true guilt-ridden Leftie, the Boy Scouts are a junior version of the Ku Klux Klan, and Fred’s words sent George into a hysteria of anti-British self-loathing.
The Martians were doing exactly what the British Empire had done for decades, he sobbed — ‘we move across the earth and we take land’.
Frederick looked suitably subdued, like a silly old duffer who has finally seen sense and decided to cancel his ticket to the Last Night Of The Proms.
Every BBC costume drama this year has waded into the same marsh of idiotic morality. Cap’n Ross and Demelza spent the last season of Poldark gnashing their teeth about the evils of slavery, while Gentleman Jack led a noble crusade for lesbian rights in the 19th century.
ITV got in on the act, too, with the dire Beecham House painting all Europeans as greedy, deceitful racists.
One of the highlights of Michael McIntyre’s Big Show on BBC1 is when the eponymous host lets himself into a celebrity’s house by night
I’m fed up with the hypocrisy of dramas that pretend to be telling a story, when all they want to do is parade their fatuous, undergraduate politics. It reeks of snobbery: we are encouraged to sneer at our forebears and feel smug that we’re so much more enlightened.
If you weren’t in the mood for feeling superior and just wanted an exciting sci-fi tale, you were out of luck. The plot fell to pieces, seesawing between the onslaught of the Martians and the desolation five years later.
In every scene George’s girlfriend Amy (Eleanor Tomlinson) wore the despairing gaze of a woman who has just realised she spent years of her life perfecting a Cornish accent as Demelza to gasp, ‘Judas, the herrings be a-come’ — and now no one will ever want her to do it again.
It could be worse. Poldark is over, but Eleanor is not yet such a faded star she’s liable to end up as the 2am guest on Michael McIntyre’s Big Show (BBC1).
One of the highlights of this old-fashioned variety hour is the segment where Michael lets himself into a celebrity’s house by night (the front door is always conveniently open) and bursts into the bedroom to play pranks on the stunned victim.
Michael would be well advised not to try this game if he ever takes his show to the U.S., since most American celebs sleep with a shotgun over the bedstead and a handgun under the pillow.
Judge Rob Rinder was the guest this time and, though he was characteristically grumpy, he didn’t attempt to shoot the intruder. Oddly, he appeared to have a bullet-proof glass balustrade around the bottom of his bed, so perhaps guns give him nightmares.
The best bit of the show is still the game in which Michael borrows a celeb’s phone and sends a cheeky message to all their contacts. It gets funnier every time.
