PUSHING DAISIES ITV Saturday, 9pm
CHUCKVirgin 1 Monday, 10pm
THE most hate mail I've received for anything I've written was provoked by a report on a small-bore shooting contest. The piece, I admit, fired a
few cheap shots at people who like guns, but I was amazed at the reaction.
"You limp-wristed gunophobe!" was one of the more printable responses, all delivered to my inbox, all dated the day of publication and all dispatched from Ohio. I wondered: was this how the chaos theory worked? A journalist in Scotland flaps his limp wrists and moments later some small bores in America's Midwest get terribly agitated?
That was my first personal experience of the dread power of the internet, but the dread power of the pro-gun lobby was almost more impressive. Painstaking sentry duty for negative comment had been followed up with vigorous defence of a "tradition". Truth be told, I was slightly disappointed that among the abusive e-mails there hadn't been one from the great Charlton Heston himself.
It's too late for that now, but Louis Theroux's African Hunting Holiday confirmed that the good folks of Ohio still love their guns. His film followed a group on a trophy-hunting expedition in South Africa's Limpopo Province. Who says Americans don't want to travel the world and experience other cultures?
Truck firm boss Anthony explained the day job back in Ohio: "I pretty much haul asphalt." It sounded dull, but game farms breeding animals to be shot provide him with all the excitement he needs. A kudu, sir? Of course. That'll be £1,100.
Paul, another trigger-happy type from Ohio, rated the zebra and the cougar as his "big two", before adding: "I'd really like to find me a baboon." I was about to shout out "Try looking in the mirror!" then realised that would be insulting to the crimson-bottomed exhibitionists.
The shooters got to pose next to their prey and look big and tough and call themselves hunters. But, as Theroux pointed out many times, this wasn't hunting. The animals were fed by farmers and lured to man-made water-holes; Paul and Anthony and the rest could hardly miss. "Isn't it a bit antiseptic?" asked Theroux. "So's bungee-jumping," came the reply. Theroux tried again: "It's like tennis without a net."
The farms keep alive animals which otherwise are at risk of being poached to extinction. It's a complicated issue, and one I'll be raising the next time I'm in Ohio.
In Pushing Daisies, a new American 'dramedy', there was animal death in the first few seconds. But then a boy called Ned discovered he had super-powers. When he touched a corpse, it came back from the dead. (The dog lives!) There was a catch: just as the super-powers gaveth, they also tooketh away. (Mom lives, the next-door neighbour's dad keels over!). Oh, and there was also this crucial caveat: first touch, life, second touch absolute death. (Mom's gone again, this time for ever!).
Who knows what the great ITV constituency made of all this. If they were still watching after five minutes they would know that Ned (Lee Pace) grew up to run a pie shop which was financed by a private investigator who, in return and via the super-powers, learned the identity of murderers so he could collect the reward money and make a, er, killing.
One of the victims was the daughter of Ned's old neighbour. Our hero was in love with her aged nine when her nickname was Chuck; all the more so when he found out she'd turned into Anna Friel. But one touch and she'll be a goner. Pushing Daisies might be obsessed with death, but it's a show where the cast are instructed, like mourners at some funerals, to "wear bright colours". You might press the contrast button, but hopefully not the off switch. It's silly but sweet and also smart. You'll want to find out if Ned can keep his hands off Chuck for an entire series.
Chuck is the title of another American import which began last week. There's a pie thing going on here, too – this Chuck (Zachary Levi) is assailed by pies subliminally, along with other strange images, after the US's security secrets are downloaded into his brain via computer spam.
Chuck knows a lot about computers – he works at the Nerd Herd helpdesk at a You Buy superstore – but little about life and nothing at all about the really important issue: women. Suddenly, though, a glamorous blonde is all over him. She's a spy who wants him to stay safe and out of the grasp of America's enemies. Can they keep their relationship professional for an entire series? I may only have room for one such TV-based dilemma in my life, but Chuck shows promise. Like the movie Knocked Up, it's Beauty And The Geek.
Frankie Howerd: Rather You Than Me (BBC4, Wednesday, 9pm) was the last in the Curse Of Comedy season, and the weakest. Impersonating a camp comedian wasn't a leap in the dark for David Walliams, but the performance still required a degree of straight acting which was beyond him. The other problem was the subject: Howerd was monumentally unfunny. The previous films had interludes of great comedy interspersed with bouts of self-loathing, but Howerd was still telling the same gag in 1990 that he'd used 35 years before.
Finally, at last, Damages (BBC1, Monday, 10.35pm) is over. Every week someone else was getting shot, and every stiff seemed to bring 17 extra plot twists, eight characters revealing new motivations, and ever more cause to remember Patty Hewes' early warning: "Trust no one." By the end, even her loyal retainer was implicated. "Look," I said to the wife, "the old boy's in on it." The reply came back: "He was in on it in episode nine. Raise your game."
There are Damages fans, and then there are those who have really been paying attention. Both sets are to be rewarded with a second series, which means more cold-eyed staring from Glenn Close. Frankie Howerd would almost certainly agree: it turns a man's wrists limp.
