Last Night's TV: Mount Pleasant, Seven Wonders of the Buddhist World

Sky One€™s new comedy drama Mount Pleasant started last night with them gloating a star-studded cast and a show written by Sarah Hooper off of Shameless. The shows lead role of Lisa is played by Sally Lindsay who was reportedly really happy and excited by the new show and Sky One website even claims she €˜raves€™ about it. From what I€™ve gathered it€™s meant to be a sort of British Desperate Housewives style look at suburban life and all the €œnonsense€ that comes with it. I can definitely say that if felt desperate and there were some housewives in it. The first episode begins with Lisa being dropped off in town by her husband of ten years Dan (Daniel Ryan) and a tiny piece of dialogue that reads, Dan, €œhave a nice afternoon€, then Lisa, €œDon€™t do anything I wouldn€™t do€, and then in unison they both say, €œat least not without me€. It was at this point I had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling. Following that was Lisa sitting for lunch with her best friend/boss Shelley (Angela Griffin) and other buddy Denise (Ainsley Howard). A few lines of poor dialogue, some weak jokes and terrible acting later I was annoyed by all three of them. As the episode progresses it didn€™t get any better. Shelley splits up with her husband Greg (?) for spending too much time in the pub and playing the fruit machines so he has to win her back. When he woos her to the pub she finds him helping another mate win the jackpot on the fruit machines and all seems lost again. Never mind as they both seem to have the personalities of a wet towel and clothes horse anyway. Lisa tries to help her other friend Denise by going on a blind date for her to check the guy isn€™t a weirdo and spends her time asking weird questions until she is spotted by someone and promptly leaves. The episode ends with Lisa and Dan heading next door to meet their new neighbour who just so happens to be the guy from the blind date. Wow, didn€™t see that one coming! I wont bore you with the rest of the details of the story as they really aren€™t worth mentioning. As the episode wore on I grew less and less interested. And it€™s not just the story. The dialogue felt so unnatural and clunky from start to finish, the jokes were cheesy and had been done a million times over and the acting felt over played and tongue in cheek to the point of me wondering whether I was actually watching the aired version of the show or the actors running through some lines after a boozy lunch. Even the theme tune felt like someone had stolen it from a poor nineties sitcom and put it in there for a joke. The overall tone of the show was that of a script that had been rotting in a top drawer somewhere for so long that it had seen less sunshine than one of Joseph Fritzel€™s kids. It would have to be a very slow day next week for me to tune into episode 2.

Was Intrigued, But Fell Sleep During Seven Wonders Of The Buddhist World.

This one off 75 minute long documentary on the BBC follows historian Bettany Hughes as she travels to the seven most important Buddhist sites in the world and gives an incite into the practice of Buddhism. If you have no desire to learn anything about Buddhism then you would probably be better off watching Big Brother and if Buddhism does interest you, as it does me, you will need some coffee and matchsticks for your eye balls to see the programme all the way through in one sitting. Bettany visits temples and other holy places in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Hong Kong, Cambodia and even Los Angeles to see what makes them so special to Buddhism. Then she relays that information as slowly and as boring as humanly, or spiritually possible, to us the viewer. As she speaks to the people that hold these places so dear and nods patronisingly at them as they answer her questions she becomes increasingly more annoying. Accompanying Bettany€™s lack of charisma is information offered by experts and Professors from such intellectual powerhouses such as Oxford and Columbia Universities €“ just incase we didn€™t believe her. They are even more boring than Bettany herself and are amongst the oddest human beings I have ever set eyes on. Buddhism is such an interesting subject with so many insightful offerings to the world and such beautiful monuments to its beliefs, but Bettany€™s ability to bore shone through spectacularly. Even the swelling mood music€™s attempt to add a wow factor to the show went by the wayside. Beautiful shots of Angkor Wat in Cambodia and the beautiful gold statue of The Reclining Buddha in Bangkok were just about seen through my fading eyes as my eye lids flickered shut in a screaming display of boredom. If you have some knowledge of Buddhism and it€™s practices this documentary only offers some minor basic bits of information that you probably weren€™t aware of, but does show off the beauty of some Buddhist monuments. There isn€™t enough detail or depth to Bettany€™s discoveries to offer more than what feels like a boring GCSE lesson where no matter how interested you are in the subject the teacher€™s voice makes you want to fall asleep. And I did for five minutes, so then had to rewind it and watch what I missed again. Bettany Hughes manages to make one of the most interesting subjects with such infinite discussions such a chore that I advise only those of strong mind, will power and coffee should undertake this journey of a TV show on the BBC iPlayer. Which is quite frankly a damn shame.