slowdown and dance with.me.uk

Artistic journey to the sunshine

TV REVIEW

TOM ADAIR


Tim Marlow on Edward Hopper, Five
Kylie Up Close, Five
Kylie's Greatest Hits, Five
Eastenders, BBC1
No Going Back, Channel 4
. . .
So, thinking of voyeuristic moments, I tuned to last night’s panting frolic with Kylie Minogue. But glued to the tribute, Kylie Up Close, you could see that the simple premise of voyeurism, (watching someone who doesn’t know they are watched) was never likely to arise. Au contraire. Instead what we had was a brainless gasp, providing old Neighbours fans with flashes of pure nostalgia reflecting an era before the flower of Ramsay Street’s innocence shed her petals (and much much more), and made Down Under a term of anatomical cheeky fascination.

Kylie’s netherlands were displayed to best advantage during Kylie’s Greatest Hits - a title you have to pronounce with some care. The Pocket Pouter’s top ten sellers were duly screened, the videos sizzling end to end, with interruptions from Kylie-pundits telling us "K was turned into a dirty little minx by Michael Hutchence", or that the "bum-tastic" star’s sexy strutting was all "tongue in cheek". There, through a spangly cloud of camp, you could see that those who’d lamented the end to Kylie’s acting career were wrong. She had never stopped. She just got hammy.

For those EastEnders fans who’ve developed "gloom dependency syndrome", Kylie’s little pink heaven would be a nightmare. But not half as bad as last night’s horror - Martin and Sonia getting hitched amid unalloyed joy. This must have induced a condition of crisis among the gloomsters that even Kat and Alfie’s marriage could not off-set. The fact that Sonia has married the bloke who killed her fiancé - albeit by accident - sets up the likelihood, sooner or later, of recrimination, gale-force rowing and marital mayhem in the newly-hatched Fowler home. And no doubt there will be heavy outbreaks of Pauline, with increasing squalls of moaning.

On No Going Back there was even more sunshine - enough to make Dracula wince and cancel his Spanish holiday. Almeria was the setting, and this week’s mission-impossible was the task of transforming a goat-house (or something similar) into a guest house in time for the unsuspecting public to make its bookings. But the goat house had no foundations (surprise, surprise). Just like Kylie.