Thursday’s TV tips
The King of entertainment Simon Cowell, David Walliams, Amanda Holden and Alesha Dixon, take their seats on the judging panel for nations most loved talent competition. They have been stunned, entertained and moved to tears on their hunt for the best talent around.
They are joined by the nation’s favourite TV duo Ant and Dec, who are on hand to encourage the acts and to congratulate or commiserate with them following their auditions.
The lucky act who is crowned the winner in the live grand final will secure a life changing cash prize of £250,000 and the opportunity to perform at this year’s The Royal Variety Performance.
Stephen Sommers’s monster masher is the epitome of a 1990s blockbuster, with fast-paced action sequences which are heavily indebted to Raiders Of The Lost Ark and its successors.
Brendan Fraser plays French Legionnaire Rick O’Connell, a likeable chap, brimming with witty one-liners for any occasion, who stumbles upon The Hidden City of Hamunaptra. Accompanied by simpering librarian Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) and her joker brother Jonathan (John Hannah), Rick sets off to uncover the legendary treasures of the fabled city and accidentally wakes the titular monstrosity (Arnold Vosloo) from its 3,000 year slumber.
If you don’t happen to be a fan of this hit sitcom, you’d better stay away from E4.
Barely a day goes by without an episode popping up of it somewhere – it is, in essence, the channel’s replacement for Friends; E4 must have shown every edition of that much-loved sitcom about 100 times.
Not that we’re complaining, of course because, contrary to the popular saying, you can’t have too much of a good thing.
This time around, Penny is having a dilemma about her future - should she return to acting, or give it up and try something else?
She turns to Sheldon for advice, but whether his words of ’wisdom’ are worth following remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Raj works on a Nasa project that involves sending a message into space.
New series following six young Irish people as they emigrate from Ireland to Canada to start a new life and chase their dreams starts on RTÉ2 with a double bill.
Exiles is a programme about the new Irish Emigrants and the new places they go – in this case Vancouver, Canada.
We meet the cast for the first time.
Sean McConnon– a flamboyant Dubliner has moved to Vancouver to advance his career as a fashion stylist. The great grandson of Jim Larkin , the famous workers leader, Sean is outspoken and has a lot to say on the subject of Irish people and Fashion.
Dylan Townsend– writer, director, poet and hipster – Dylan is from Howth in Dublin – and has followed his older brother, actor Stuart Townsend into the world of film and TV. He has moved to Vancouver to make his web series Hipsterverse – “A kinda National Geographic about Hipsters”
Nicola Hughes – a well known Dublin model, wants to throw off the shackles of Grafton Street press calls and make it as a TV presenter in Canada. Leaving her persona and her celebrity boyfriend Alex Mytton from Made in Chelsea behind – she sets out to find a new version of herself.
George Hutton – from Derry is an Opera singer and Irish tenor . After brief stints singing in Ireland he has been mostly working in coffee shops and bars and has struggled to make it. He moved to Vancouver to follow his dream of finding a new audience for his singing.
Jade Stone – a Wexford native, studied marketing in UCD but has always wanted to become a photographer. In Vancouver, with her new visa – she wants to make a new career with her new life and starts on the road to becoming a photographer
India Dawson- legal student and show jumping champion – has taken two years out of college and got the visa for Canada to pursue her life long ambition of becoming an indie pop singer. Having sung all her life , the prospect of the Canadian visa gave her the now or never chance and she took it. Her ambition is to perform, write and record her first album.
Amy spends most of her shifts trying desperately to get into Captain Holt’s good books – she’s probably one of those people who always wanted to be teacher’s pet, and needs affirmation in everything she does. So, she must be beside herself with glee when she’s invited to Holt’s house, although it isn’t under the best of circumstances.
Holt and Rosa have arranged an dinner date with their significant others and hope that Amy and fellow invitee Gina will help dispel any awkwardness – regular viewers will probably suspect they will only make matters worse.
Meanwhile, Jake injures himself during the pursuit of a criminal, but refusing to take time off work to recover proves to be a very big mistake indeed.
Back in February 1963 Jaguar began work on its Lightweight E-type project, with a plan to build 18 Special GT E-type cars. However, only 12 of the aluminium-bodied vehicles were completed back in the 1960s, and now the British car manufacturer have finished the missing six Lightweights that were never made.
Mark Evans follows the creation of these cars that have been hand-built in-house by Jaguar’s finest craftsmen and specialist engineers, with each being constructed to the exact specifications of their original 1960s forebears.
But before you get on the phone to your nearest Jaguar showroom, you should note these cars will come with a massive price tag – around the £1million mark – and not everyone is happy about the whole situation.
A string of shocking revelations means that Wendy’s undercover mission has become critical to the investigation, and she struggles to hold her nerve as the pressure rises.
The team hopes she can keep it together as she tries to get close to her target, who proves to be a supremely tricky customer and harbours links to both the IRA and KGB.
Meanwhile, Joe is facing troubles of his own, with the mission’s security under threat from a mole inside MI5 – can he discover the traitor’s identity before it’s too late? Spy thriller set in 1972, starring Tom Hughes and Brian Cox.
Irish scribe Marty (Colin Farrell) has reached an impasse with a script called Seven Psychopaths, much to the chagrin of his long-suffering girlfriend Kaya (Abbie Cornish).
“I got the title – I just haven’t been able to come up with all the psychopaths yet,” Marty tells best friend Billy (Sam Rockwell), a jobbing actor who is involved in a dog-napping scam.
Billy places a newspaper advert asking bona fide psychopaths to share their life stories with Marty, and mad man Zachariah (Tom Waits) answers the call. Meanwhile, Billy kidnaps a shih tzu called Bonny, unaware the pooch is the pride and joy of sadistic gangster Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson).
When Charlie discovers that the four-legged object of his affections has been abducted, retribution is swift and brutal.
With the credit crunch biting deep, money-saving has become the nation’s favourite hobbie. But what happens when ‘thrifty’ becomes ‘tight-fisted’ and keeping hold of your cash becomes an obsession?
This playful, authored special goes in search of the biggest Scrooge’s of them all to see what we can learn from them.
