Shooting Stars Review: Mock The Bleak

SHOOTING STARS: Wednesday 26th August, BBC Two, 10pm Alert Me

Maybe I’m getting old, but it doesn’t feel like seven years since Vic and Bob last regularly graced our screens with their sharp lapels, surreal club-style singing and Ulrika-ka-ka baiting.

Last year’s Christmas special paved the way for this new series, and it’s – almost – the same as you remember it, give or take an inch or two on V&B’s girth and a new breast or two for Ulrika.

The familiar elements are all here – the Dove From Above, Matt Lucas as baby-man drummer George Dawes, the nonsense catchphrases. New team captain Jack Dee does his professional miserable thing. Christine Bleakley, in the traditional sexy woman thigh-rubbing seat, gets an eyeful of Vic’s dirty pants (actually, his terrorising of the female guests is starting to feel genuinely creepy). Ulrika says remarkably little and looks mildly appalled.

The genius stroke is ‘ordinary’ panel member Angelos Apithemious (comedian Dan Skinner), an anorak-wearing burger van owner resembling a lost Phoenix Nights character.

There are those who believe Shooting Stars should be laid to rest, a genuinely subversive part of TV history. Perhaps inevitably it doesn’t feel as strange and original as it was back in the day. There’s no doubt the pair have reigned-in the all-out weirdness. A couple of questions even had real answers. Surely that’s against the rules?

The singing intro is more Morecambe and Wise-like than ever, and the celebrity humiliation at the end – Christine again, balancing pork pies on her head – is nowhere near as brutal as it once was. But even in a schedule crammed with ‘humorous’ quizzes, Shooting Stars is still far funnier than most.

George Dawes’ jaunty musical rendition of life in an old people’s home was almost profound (‘lunch at 10, dinner at 4′). And if anyone knows how to suggestively animate a row of corn-on-the-cobs to Tom and Jerry music, it’s Vic Reeves.

Well, you don’t get that on Mock The Week.


Cheryl Freedman