The Sex Education Show

There's a favourable and very fair review on The Guardian website about The Sex Education Show. Bearing in mind the painful and just downright strange conversations I had about sex and relationships with my parents this is what caught my eye in Heidi Stephens piece:

This is not my kind of thing, as a rule - people talking openly about sex, how much they're getting it, what kind they're getting. I'd rather clean the oven. But this show claimed to present both teenage and adult perspectives on all matters sexual. And because I have both a 16-year-old son and a nine-year-old daughter, any advice on how to broach this stuff in a way that is less likely to scar my offspring for life is gratefully received.

As it turned out, I didn't need to make notes, because teenage son decided to watch it with me. Which I guess was what Channel 4 intended when they gave it a pre-watershed 8pm slot, but was entirely unexpected and potentially horrifically embarrassing (no, for ME, not him). He wandered in at the start, asked what I was watching, and decided to "give it five minutes". By the end he admitted it had been "interesting" and "useful". And in the mumble-heavy vocabulary of a 16-year-old boy, I believe that counts as a glowing review.

You can see it on 4oD. Alone. With your teenager. Or even with a parent.

The Channel 4 Sex Education website is here (and it's well worth checking out).

Chocolate Junkie Pig:

In The Guardian Sam Wollaston takes to Willie's Wonky Chocolate Factory and makes me want to watch it. This is what he says about the roasting of a chocolate basted pig:

Junkie pig, that's what I want. It's a dish I wasn't aware of before watching Willie's Wonky Chocolate Factory (Channel 4, Sunday), but that's probably because it almost certainly doesn't exist outside the Harcourt-Cooze family. Willie H-C is one of those posh people it's impossible not to like. He has a wild look in his eye that suggests he's lived a bit, he has big plans, crazy ideas, tons of enthusiasm. It's just not clear whether he's got the down-to-earth skills to make those plans happen.

Chocolate, that's his thing: he's trying to make the king of chocolates, with beans grown on his farm in Venezuela. It's basically that show Jimmy's Farm, with palm trees. It looks fun being one of the Harcourt-Cooze kids. So what if the family Volvo doesn't have glass in all its windows - they get to hang out in the jungle for a month every year, dance salsa, eat chocolate with everything, including junkie pig.

You need a whole pig for Junkie Pig, and an outdoor wood-burning oven big enough to accommodate it. Kill the pig and make a marinade from white wine, balsamic vinegar, apricots, and chocolate of course, all buzzed up together. Then inject it into the pig, using a fresh hypodermic needle (hence the name) - all over, like a proper old smackhead, not like some novice, first-time user. Then pop it into the oven for about three hours, until the skin is nice and crispy. Yum. You don't see that on MasterChef.

Got 4oD? Watch Junkie Pig here right now.

I'm off on holiday: Skins Series 2 is on 4oD

Catch up with all of the first series of Skins, watch the second series as it happens on 4oD.

Reaper free on 4oD

I've been watching Reaper on 4oD and it's pretty fine. It reminds me of Buffy crossed with Clerks (which isn't surprising as Clerks director Kevin Smith directed the first Ep). The other thing I like is that our hero Sam's sidekick, Bert "Sock" Wysocki (played by Tyler Labine) resembles quite spookily my old (but long time no see) friend Gideon.

Got 4oD? Watch Reaper here!
Not Got 4oD? Get 4oD here!

Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack on 4oD

Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack, the all new cleaned up non-racist version of this old favourite has started. You can see the whole of the launch show (all 90 minutes of it!) on 4oD or get the news and clips on Channel4.com.

Early coverage of the revamped show on The Sun's website is very positive with their BB columnist writing:

I was sick and tired of BB after Jade Goody’s antics last year.
But Matt’s choice of lumbering Scot John to do his bidding had me laughing aloud.
So that’s the next three weeks’ telly viewing sorted then.

Personally I'm looking forward to the Chapman brothers taking on the celebrity role as I've always enjoyed their antics.

Feeling Shameless: another day another dollar

It's a new year so just to reiterate for all our new visitors: If you haven't already installed the 4oD application which lets you watch 100s of hours of new and old Channel 4 programming on your PC all for free you can get it from here.

For the rest of you old skoolers here's some of the highlights on 4oD today, just open the 4oD app and have a browse:

All of the first 4 series of Shameless plus the latest episode of the new series
The Look Good Naked Specials
My Fake Baby
Murderers on the Dancefloor (about the making of the classic YouTube Thriller video. No, not the Jacko one, the one made by the 1,500 inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines)
Hollyoaks
Deal of No Deal
Big Fat Quiz of the Year
and the first episode of series 2 of FX's Brotherhood

New on 4oD: First Cut, Rules of Seduction

If you were in the pub yesterday evening (as was your correspondent) having a post-work pint or just out with your mates then you'd have missed first time director John Farrar's documentary Rules of Seduction shown in the indecently early 7.35pm time slot. An investigation into the techniques of the Pick Up Artist the programme follows PUA wannabee Ian at his first bootcamp where he learns basic skills including maintaining eye contact, getting girls' phone numbers and presumably not coming across as a creepy weirdo. As Time Out said in their preview (not online sadly):

It's a great little film: there are many more experienced directors who could learn a thing or two from Farrar about the construction of a good documentary.

High praise indeed from our friends at Time Out.

New on 4oD: Hitler's Favourite Royal

Hitler's Favourite Royal covers the life of Prince Charles Edward, Queen Victoria's youngest grandchild, who was forced by his Grandmother to take up the Dukedom of Coburg in Germany after a series of unexpected deaths of uncles and cousins. With the advent of World War One, he reluctantly fought for the German army but refused to fight the British. However, once the war was over, he was stripped of his English titles. Disillusioned, he turned to far right politics and became an enthusiastic early supporter of the emergent Nazi Party and unwittingly helped in Hitler's rise to power. The press blurb describes it as the "tragic story of the little English prince who turned Nazi".

In Friday's Guardian Lucy Mangan writes:

Hitler's Favourite Royal (Channel 4) may have made me a monarchist. Not, of course, because of its subject, Prince Leopold Charles Edward - a Nazi-loving blot whom the Windsors have been trying to wipe from the escutcheon for the last 70 years - but because of its inclusion of clips from a 1977 television interview with his sister, Princess Alice. Aged 94, she was a giggling confection of pink hair and delight, recalling idyllic days when she and Charles Edward would visit their grandmother Queen Victoria. "She was awf'lly nice! When we lorst our front teeth, she used to give us a pound!" Once, the princess had lorst three teeth between visits and presented them all proudly to the queen. "'Oh dear!' she said - 'That's very expensive!'" Alice giggled anew, clearly more inclined that her grandmamma to amusement.