Three hilarious, but radically different, stand-up comedians will be doing their thing in this festival series, which begins with Tooth Fairy - Live, a one-man show featuring Alan Carr, who is openly and outrageously gay, but insists that he does not do gay comedy.
"I just think gay people need to get over themselves. Just because you're gay and on the telly doesn't mean you're a role model. I'm just a comedian. That's all I am. I don't talk about being gay. What better equality for gays than that?"
He'll be followed by Irish funnyman Dara O'Briain (pictured), who gained fame with his lightning-fast, improvisational comedy show called Mock the Week in which he whipped out wisecracks about everything from the royal family, to British soccer players, to the cult of celebrity. To close the series there's Sean Lock, who is a newcomer to the field.
He spent some years writing gags for other comedians, then started writing for himself and grew famous with a weekly, 15-minute skit about living in a London tower block, spying on his neighbours and revealing their quirky secrets.
It's the kind of humour that'll keep your winter blues at bay.
Series - being Humant - Tuesday, BBC Entertainment, 20:30
Vampires have made a major comeback, especially on television. In general, tales of the supernatural usually feature psychics, telepaths and other occult beings, but viewers of the first series of Being Human will know this programme's all about a vampire named Mitchell (Aidan Turner), a werewolf called George (Russell Tovey) and a ghostly girl called Anna (Lenora Crichlow). The story echoes the characters of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books in that they try to suppress and control the wayward part of their nature as they go about their daily lives.
Their opponent in Season One was Herrick, but in this second Season we meet fanatical Professor Jaggat and ruthless Kemp, both fundamentalist Christians out to destroy anything "unnatural". Their goal is to kill the three characters, or to use them as guinea pigs in a brutal, occult ritual that will exorcise the evil spirits out of them.
Audacious and spiritually controversial, it may not be to everyone's liking, but for fans of "things that go bump in the night" it's a winner.
Documentary - Blizzard : Race to the Pole - Sunday, BBC Knowledge, 20:30
Robert Falcon Scott. Just about everybody has some sense of who the famous polar explorer is in relation to the Antarctic. The name Roald Amundsen also has a resonance, but I'll bet fewer people know who Amundsen was and what he did. That is a great irony, because Scott and Amundsen competed in one of the most famous and dangerous races ever known, a contest to see who could be the first man to reach the South Pole. That was, in 1912, the final frontier to be explored by man.
Scott was an heroic figure, embodying the power and reach of the British Empire. He was an imperial adventurer, like Rhodes and Livingstone in Africa or James Cook in Australia. Amundsen wasn't so larger-than-life. He was Norwegian and famous for discovering the Northwest Passage, a feat that had eluded explorers from Christopher Columbus onwards.
The two men were equally matched and, as we know, Amundsen won the race, while Scott's team died of starvation and frostbite.
For years the theory was that Amundsen was a detail freak who loaded his expedition with equipment for every possible contingency.
The matching theory was that Scott and his team were over-confident and when the weather turned against them, they were ill-equipped and suffered the grim consequences.
This six-part series retraces the routes of both Scott and Amundsen, using their letters and diaries as a day-to-day guide, while all the actors were chosen because they matched the height and weight of the actual men. All in all, a spell-binder.
Classic - Back to Bataan - They were expendable - Saturday, SABC3, 21:30
Movie buffs and military historians will be interested in SABC3's unexpected - and somewhat inexplicable - interest in two vintage Second World War movies, starring John Wayne (pictured below).
Back to Bataan (1945) was about the Philippines, an island group that had been brutally colonised by the Americans in 1902.
The Filipinos had fought the Americans for their independence but during the war Japan invaded the islands. The only salvation for the Philippines was to join forces with their hated colonial masters, the Yanks. Wayne is the US general and Antony Quinn plays the Filipino resistance leader in this propagandised drama.
They Were Expendable (1945) was in the capable hands of director John Ford. It also deals with the US's battle against Japan for control of the Philippines but this film focuses on the naval aspects of this conflict. It was during this time that Patrol Torpedo boats were being readied for combat, with strong opposition from the military brass, who did not think the war at sea was as important as the war on land.
Now, 55 years later, these films no longer retain their patriotism that made them hits, but film buffs will be interested to see the way they were made and the purpose they served.
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