Is Nostalgia what it used to be?

Christmas & New Year Telly. Usually a pile of old donkey cack garnished with a few gems here and there. Xmas 2006 & the first few days of Jan 2007 has been no exception. There's been a recurring theme running through all the programmes I've watched, and that's nostalgia, in some form or other.

Take "This Life +10" for starters. Ten years (or so) on from when we last left the cast of the edgy Britpop based drama/soap about would be barristers and their sex lives, due to popular demand (let's face it, you wanted to know what happened after the wedding fight...) we 've got a feature length special returning to those characters ten years on. Gathering together the main characters again using the old "meet up for a funeral" plot device, we find that each of them has been on their own personal journey and whilst their circumstances may have changed, their personal lives are as fucked up as ever.

Egg's now a writer and has written a best selling novel based on the life of himself and his friends back in the mid 90s when the original series was set. He's "not" married with child to miserable Milly who's given law up to be a "supermum" but there's problems between them. Unconvincingly, Egg's having a documentary made about him by a young girly called Claire who he's eyeing up, and a reunion with our heroes at Miles's plush country home is ideal plot contrivance to get them all together for much bickering, casual swearing and Portishead (but played on an iPod - do you see what they've done there?)

Oh yes, arsepain Miles has escaped from the Carribean and Mastercard ad-voiceovers, has "made it" in the business world (or has he? ahhhhhh) and has come back from Hong Kong with a new glamorous trophy wife and is living in the aforementioned country pile. With a horse. And a personal trainer. And bad hair. Gay Warren's back, not mourning Ferdy's demise honest, and is a life coach but secretly dependent on prescription drugs. And then there's uberbitch Anna, who's frankly aged badly, so not still in love with anybody especially not Miles, and made it in the world of law but has "sacrificed" the chance for a baby to do so, therefore she now wants to find a sperm donor and so fill that empty void. But who could she ask? Ahhhhh.

All very very contrived but for 50 or so minutes it held up, with a few choice lines here and there (Miles's "Am I supposed to be shagging as much as he thinks I am?" line being good) and some brief musings on politics, getting older and the youth of today, but then the arse fell out of the "plot".

Warren tries to top himself, oh no he hasn't, oh he just wants to be loved, oh he'll be Anna's sperm donor, throw those drugs down the toilet you don't need them, hurrah. Miles wanted to travel the world when younger but didn't, oh his business is actually going tits up, he's not rich but poor, the bailliffs are coming round, his wife's left him, he loves Anna but she doesn't really love him, fuck it he's going backpacking... despite having no cash. Egg's not going to write another book, that'll save his marriage and Milly won't go mad and fall off any more horses. And the Claire girl who's making the documentary - hey, she's bad cos she's in the Media, videoing their arguments and generally doing she was asked to do i.e make a documentary about these self-important up their arse middle class tossers having rows, so Egg destroys her tapes - by throwing them in a lake. And then falls in the lake. And then drags Milly into the lake. Ha ha ha ha ha. And everybody lives happily etc. Yeah right.

The last half hour or so turned into a Richard Curtis-esque "Peter's Friends" type smugfest, where you were willing for some sort of gas explosion to occur in the house and wipe the cast out. Or at least maim them. Now that would have been unexpected. I won't even mention some of the dialogue disasters, toe-curling lines such as "motherhood is the best kept secret of our generation". Pardon my French, but fuck right off.

"This Life" the original series was not big, not clever but enjoyable drama... of it's time. The creator, Amy Jenkins to my knowledge hasn't written any other TV drama since, and "This Life +10" shows why (and let's face it, she only wrote a fraction of the original series, and all the best stuff such as the second series was from other writers - fact). One trick pony, and this pony is lame.

So we wanted to know what happened next, and it was shit. Serves us right. But sometimes those clever TV types can pull this trick and it works. Whilst the Christmas day "Doctor Who: The Runaway Bride" was watchable but a bit hollow (good car/Tardis chase, Tate bareable, average baddie), the spin off kids TV show "The Sarah Jane Adventures" ticked all the right boxes. We were reintroduced to Liz Sladen's Sarah in last year's "School Reunion" episode of "Who" which was excellent, and the Beeb obviously saw potential in reusing the character in her own series, but for CBBC this time. And the pilot for "TSJA" was great kids TV, treating the character sympathetically and faithfully but moving her on to take on a Doctoresque role, with non too annoying teenage kids in tow replacing her in the companion role. Witty lines, fun villains and bright and breezy direction, this is RTD returning triumphantly to his original home of kids telly.

As previously implied in this blog, Sarah Jane Smith was my companion - I was 4 years of age when she came onto the programme and for me, it's all about the Doctor & Sarah - everything else is a distant second. She & Tom were there in my formative years, so I was probably gonna enjoy this, but I actually found I enjoyed it more than some episodes of proper "Who" from last year, despite it being a "kids" show. So roll on the series proper. And it was better than at least 10 episodes of the so called gritty adult "Torchwood".

Talking of which, the last few seconds of the final episode when the sound of the Tardis appears from nowhere and then Captain Jack is whisked away off screen (presumably by the Doctor) leaving his colleagues mystified to his whereabouts. If I was him I'd be in a rush to get out of there as well. That scene alone made up for 13 weeks of Scooby Doo nonsense with those unlikeble Welsh knobs, and made me feel about 8 years old again.

Which leads me cleverly on to something else that made me feel 8 years old again... BBC2's "It Started With Swap Shop"... you see I don't just churn this out. It's all properly thought out and all that. I'm dead good me. Just how good was this show? Two hours plus of pure Noel action. Bliss. Celia & I were dressed appropriately for the occasion, in jim-jams (her sat on the floor for full effect) and for those couple of hours it was like seeing your childhood flash before your eyes. Especially as Noel seemed to be in his element behind that desk, it was almost as if it was a cold Saturday morning back in 1978.

All bases were covered, with John Craven, Maggie & Keith, the swaporama, celebrity guest swaps, crappy Saturday Superstone, swearing at Five Star, Phil & Sarah on "Going Live", "we don't do Duvets", Posh Paws, Delia Smith, Tony Hart, Johnny Ball... ahhh. Of course, these days, nobody bothers with kids TV on a Saturday morning, shunted as it is to BBC2. Which is a shame as Noel seemed to be really proud of what he started, and there did seem to be a sense that the makers of the show really cared about "Swap Shop" and the whole ethos of Saturday Morning kids TV. They went all out to make this tribute as good as it could possibly be.

Which was very very good. You can't ask for more.