Thursday's TV tips
This week on Pet Island, super cute African Pygmy hedgehogs and a waggiest tail competition!
Pet Island returns with a trip to the Saint Patrick’s Day Dog Expo in Dublin where canines compete in waggiest tail, best trick and even doggy dancing competitions.
We also find out about the work of a cat midwife and follow Shadow a Siamese through her birthing plan. Finally we meet Leslie Burban from Cork who keeps African Pygmy Hedgehogs, quite possibly the cutest creatures to have ever existed.
House hunting can be a challenging experience at the best of times, but when you’re up against a tight deadline, it’s particularly stressful. Lucky for expectant parents Steve and Sally then that they have expert help in the form of Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer as they scour the Midlands in search of a dream home in Warwickshire or Northamptonshire.
The couple hope to have their new family home in time for the arrival of their first child, but with mere months left before Sally’s due date, they’ll have their work cut out.
Especially since they both have different requirements: Sally wants a chocolate-box rural location with nearby country walks, while Steve, who works in the drinks business, needs office space – and a good village pub close to home.
Is a budget of £475,000 going to be enough to see them snap up a gaff that ticks all the boxes?
Last year, Musharaf Asghar found a place in the heart of the nation thanks to the series Educating Yorkshire, as millions tuned in to watch the lad overcome his stutter and achieve the C grade he needed in his English GCSE.
However, although he made strides to improving his speech impediment, he - along with more than half a million other people across the UK who suffer from stammers - still struggles to get his words out sometimes.
This documentary follows Mushy, along with other sufferers of the condition, as they undergo an intensive four-day course of treatment. Also featured is 23-year-old Vicky Croft, who developed a stammer last year after suffering a minor stroke.
Can the course, which features everything from new breathing techniques to methods for talking on the phone and public speaking, help Mushy, Vicky and the others regain control?
Okay, we’ll admit it: we had some misgivings about this second series after learning Andy Samberg wasn’t going to be involved.
That was until we learned just how well Taylor Lautner would do as he stepped into Samberg’s larger-than-life shoes. And besides, Greg Davies and Helen Baxendale are as good as ever in their relatively straight roles as put-upon parents.
This week, dad Ken tries to fulfil a dying man’s wish – his old history professor, Dr Rafferty, passes away, but not before issuing Ken with a bizarre plea in a bookshop. However, not everything goes according to plan, and before long both Ken and Dale have bones to pick at the late academic’s funeral.
Samberg’s absence may be felt, but thanks to Twilight star Lautner’s delightfully whacky turn as Cuckoo’s naive long-lost son, the gags still come thick and fast.
A young sci-fi fan by the name of Ben has a strange dream one night, which leaves him with a vision of a complex electrical circuit. With the help of a child-prodigy pal he makes the real thing, and the pair learn their creation is capable of all manner of wondrous things – including, ultimately and with the help of a third friend, space travel.
However, while on a quest for alien life, they soon find that all is not quite what it seems.
This film is massively underrated thanks to poor commercial performance on its release, but the director, Gremlins man Joe Dante, and its young cast including River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke both in their film debuts, perform excellently.
By rights it should be a bit of insubstantial fluff, but thanks to the charm and skill of all involved it’s a real treat.
Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix, Jason Presson, Robert Picardo
As the name suggests, the final movie from the Python stable is a jet black comedy pondering the meaning of birth, life and death.
It opens with Terry Gilliam’s supporting feature, The Crimson Permanent Insurance, which kicks off a series of loosely linked sketches.
They include an ambitious musical number, and features the unforgettable routine in which overweight diner Mr Creosote (Terry Jones) is tempted to finish off a mountain of food with a ’wafer thin’ mint.
This is arguably the weakest of the Python movies, but is bursting with clever ideas and certainly impressed the judges at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival. It won the Grand Prize of the Jury.
John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin
A traumatised Special Forces soldier has turned psychotic while living in an isolated area of woodland. The authorities plan to take drastic action, so the man who trained him in hand-to-hand armed combat attempts to track him down before any more blood is spilled.
Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro are the leading men, and they’re on good form in an offbeat action thriller from William Friedkin, the director of The Exorcist and The French Connection
Good support comes from Connie Nielsen and Mark Pelegrino.
Tommy Lee Jones, Benicio Del Toro, Connie Nielsen, Mark Pelegrino, Leslie Stefanson, John Finn
