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The week ahead: mums-in-law and other dictators
Conrad Astley24/ 3/2006
WE'VE had husbands moving into households from hell, posh
families swapping their yachting holidays for scuzzy breaks in
Benidorm, and rich girls seeing how the other half live. So
Take My Mother-in-Law (Tuesday, ITV1) doesn't
sound like a giant imaginative leap forward.
The first episode sees Sunderland fan Tony declaring football comes
before family, hogging the TV, and refusing to eat his wife's
salads.
Just in case you can't see where this is going, the mother-in-law
moves in to set him straight.
A lazy slob of a husband, a bruising battle-axe of a mother-in-law,
and lots of shouting. It's a classic British night in.
Derek Jacobi has put his thespian weight behind an attempt to
dramatise one of the strangest recent episodes of British political
history in
Pinochet In Suburbia (Sunday,
BBC2).
Former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet came to Britain in
1998 for medical treatment, but found himself charged with torture
and placed under house arrest in Surrey.
Step in Margaret Thatcher, an ally of Pinochet during the Falklands
war, who controversially visited the former dictator at his mansion
prison and expressed her support.
While this may have been a fascinating story played out across the
pages of newspapers, it's difficult to see how it will translate
onto the screen.
Like all worthy fact-based dramas, Pinochet In Suburbia faces the
danger of failing because the events involved are too complicated -
as well as because they mainly take place in courtrooms over a
two-year period.
Anna Massey, playing Thatcher, looks more like a kindly Miss
Marple, and it seems likely the drama will depend on Jacobi - a
chilling dead ringer for the old tyrant - to step in as its
saviour.
Speaking of old tyrants, Paul O'Grady has made a name for himself
as the king of daytime chat since ditching the drag act, but
Channel 4 bosses are now very excited they've poached him from
ITV1.
The channel may have changed, but there's no reason to suppose the
presenter or guests on
The New Paul O'Grady Show
(from Monday, Channel 4) will be any less tedious.
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