One of my favourite writers is actually Alison Graham, TV editor of the Radio Times. If you don't know the publication, that isn't an oxymoron - the magazine was founded in the 1920s to cover the fledgling BBC radio service. Still run by the BBC, it now covers all British TV and radio. Her funniest work was the now sadly erstwhile "Soap and Flannel" coverage of the top British soap operas, but her previews and weekly TV column are brilliantly written, entertaining and often thought-provoking. Of course, you're never going to agree with everything a critic says. And, as befitting someone who's TV preferences I feel tend to veer more towards style than substance, I sometimes wonder if she spins a roulette wheel to decide which opinion she's going to have, before wrapping her wonderful writing style around it. Ah, the curse of having those empty column inches to fill!
This week, she's gone for the particularly contentious, rejoicing at the axing of Where the Warm Heartbeat Practice Is - or is it just called Heartbeat? - the zenith of those cosy Sunday night dramas. A few years ago she remarked on the torrent of disagreement she received when criticising the show.
Oh, and there's a little aside about Wimbledon: "Tennis commentary is the most pointless of all sports' commentaries. What's to say about two people who thump a ball with metronomic tedium, to and fro, across a net?"
As pointless as writing millions of words about a few moving pictures on the front of a box, perhaps?
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