The 2009 House

Florence and KanYe thought it would be fun living in The 2009 House, but they were shocked when their modern key worker podule was redecorated in traditional 2009 style - modelled on the Big Brother house. 'Look at all the mirrors!' shrieked Florence. 'And the en-suite's been turned into a diary room.' Florence has been given a typical 2009 job - she's a celebrity chef - and KanYe has given up his modern job of Alien Liason Officer to take up the traditional role of unemployed hedge fund broker. Their children Enid and Reginald have been taken out of their oxygen bubble in the OxBridge Dome and Enid has been given a eating disorder and breast implants and Reginald has been dressed as the dead Michael Jackson.

I really enjoyed Electric Dreams, but then ever since The 1900 House I've loved these time-warp documentaries. There's nothing I would like more than being forced to live in the seventies again – in fact, anyone who's been to my flat will confirm that I'm half way there. It's interesting that this series is focussing on the technological angle of the age, ticking its way through the decade via the introduction of various gadgets to the stranded family. The introduction of Pong to the family was a particular highlight. We never had Pong. We got a BBCB in 1984. But even the furnishings were overshadowed by the glamorous tech-support geek's gushing interview with Sir Clive Sinclair, a man so controlled and unimpressed by her admiration he may as well have pissed on her pocket calculator and laughed as it exploded.

The biggest revelations for me were that Cortinas didn't have wing mirrors and that these people didn't like their Soda Stream (philistines). And the most nostalgic moment was that recording of the show coincided with Snow Day earlier this year, and I found myself nostalgic for my childhood when the house was fucking freezing in the winter because we only had a gas fire in the living room. Next week in the eighties I suspect it's going to be uncannily like Adam and Joe.

Scream if you can't bear it any longer

Watch, the TV channel famous only for happily destroying Richard and Judy's career, announced a new game show today. Called Scream If You Know the Answer it's to be recorded at Thorpe Park and will include the usual desperate, damaged sellebities – Jordan, Heather Mills – attempting tasks while riding on various rollercoasters. It's a five minute insert on Jim'll Fix It turned into an entire series.

The Guardian reported today: UKTV's director of entertainment commissioning, Lisa Perrin, said: 'The thing I really love about Scream is that our celebrities get to ride too, so we can watch them and the contestants being pushed and pulled here, there and everywhere by huge G forces.'

So that's it. A commissioning director of a 'major' TV channel is quite happy to announce a show that is essentially poking animals with sticks and laughing at them as they flinch. Even Hole in the Wall doesn't rely entirely on involuntary muscle responses for its entertainment. This time next year they'll be announcing a show revolving entirely around feeding Jordan beans and listening to her farting.

It's yesterday once more

I love a good bit of glitzy light entertainment. It's so odd how it died in about 1981 and then took decades to recover. Like the Mini, Doctor Who and rampant global recession the return of this kind of cheesy Summertime Special type nonsense harks back to a comforting pre-home computer age where incongruous celebrities dance like it's the heyday of Morecambe and Wise.

Very odd that people are always saying Brucie's past it. He's over twice Tess Daly's age, but has twice her talent. Her attempts to be funny are truly shocking, like watching someone defecate on screen. Brucie has always been rather bumbling, it's been part of his stage persona since his Palladium days. But when he does great old-school jokes, like the hoary old complicated explanation of cricket, or calling Anton his love child, it brings back lovely memories of ham-fisted attempts at throwing pots or country dancing on the Generation Game.

Alesha, rather less ineffectual this week, gave quite an eye-opening insight into the celebrities' state pre-dancing: 'their hearts will be beating...' One would hope so. It is the very least we could expect. Natalie Cassidy was, as I'd hoped, was utterly gorgeous. 'If Vincent falls in love with me then that's something we'll have to face at the time', she said, before plunging into a particularly vampish tango by the end of which, never mind shouting at the telly, I was positively whooping.

The duffsters were queueing up to stumble round the dance floor like James Caan in Misery, not least terrible, bland Richard Dunwoody and the odious Phil Tufnell, who will more than likely win the show. 'People most remember me for being married to Ronnie Wood' said Jo Wood. I don't. In fact, I have absolutely no idea who she is. I can barely remember the names of the Rolling Stones, so far removed are they from my life, let alone their ex-wives. I also had no idea who Ricky Whittle was, though I suspect I may remember now. Laila is tremendous fun, camply competitive and utterly beautiful all togged up like a lovely Spanish lady. Anton even got to dance with his celebrity partner for once, rather than hauling them about like a Henry hoover into hard to reach corners. And he's so old-school, surely to be revealed as a BBC experiment locked in the Blue Peter time capsule in the Italian Sunken Garden since 1976 while teaching the Brotherhood of Man their winning dance for Save All Your Kisses For Me. Ask him about tamagotchis, Thatcher or Britpop and the poor bewildered mite will have no idea.

Strict Machine

Alesha told Rav that he gave the tango his hole, Tess Daly quoted T. S. Eliot, Bruce got everything wrong about It Takes Two, to an increasingly startled Claudia Winkleman. Yes, Strictly is back, and apart from the unwelcome loss of bossy dance legend Arlene Phillips it is a lot of fun.

Hilarious, brilliant Sonia from EastEnders, one of the best ever soap actresses, has already won it for me before the series had started. There's Joe Calzaghe, preposterously sexy beast, terrible dancer (poor Kristina...), to keep that bit of my brain and trousers occupied. And Lynda Bellingham, who's always been great value, even back in the soft porn films she made in the seventies, and was a total bloody treat this evening dancing her bonkers zombie tango.

There's reality TV slut Phil Tufnell, who we're all supposed to love because he's hilariously off his tits all the livelong day. I hate him, the drooling cretin. And there's also a whole load of people I have never heard of and will not remember when it's over: some sports presenter who looks like Ricky Gervais, and half the people who did the group dance, who could have been anybody.

But all the attention was on the judges. Alesha is a pointless, waffling addition as she has no expertise. Why didn't they ditch stupid Bruno if they wanted to bring in a new judge? No-one likes him and his shouting you are a beautiful swan at any woman who even steps on the floor. Oh, and Tess Daly, fuck off you talentless, witless stick insect. I cringe every time you attempt a joke, and even walking and smiling seems to test you to the very limits of your being.

That's my Saturdays (and the odd Friday) solved for the rest of the year. Cosy nights in with a packet of biscuits, licking the screen every time Joe pops up (don't get voted off you idiot). Lovely.

Lancelot's balls

Teeny tiny Derren Brown jumps on a small podium to meet his adoring audience at eye height. He predicted the lottree earlier this week, clever wee thing, and now he's explaining how.

A woman from the audience who doesn't like mice has to put her hand in boxes which may contain a mouse to show fear heightening predictability. The big reveal is that there is no mouse. Then, to up the non-existent stakes, a pre-recorded guy has to stamp on polystyrene cups which may contain an upturned knife. Clever little Derren correctly predicts the cups the guy will not stamp on, and good job because the last cup is hiding a mouse. Applause all round.

Splendidly, though he demonstrates these theories, he doesn't explain them in any depth. It's the most delicious bit of showmanship. I love a bit of devious psychology. But then he opens up a bit more. Some 'deep maths' (whatever that is) in a heads and tails experiment. And then, mirroring a classic guess the weight of the ox county fair competition, he applies the wisdom of crowds to the lottery. A group of people are asked to predict the next balls in a lottery sequence, which he then averages out. With this strategy he got as far as predicting three of the numbers. Woo.

Then he's onto automatic writing, the old spiritualist trick, with his panel. Four numbers correct. And the day of the lottery draw dawns and his team are off again, automatic writing. Numbers correct as we knew, and the group are ecstatic. But then he offers an alternative solution to the doubters, smuggling weighted balls into the machine, which he strenuously denies.

I am utterly credulous. I uncritically believe anything magicians or showmen like tiny DB say. So seeing someone so fundamentally untrustworthy demonstrate the different theories with such scant and partial explations was never really going to be very much help. Especially as he wants to continue his career and use similar techniques over and over.

He's funny, he's smart, he's devious, he's a nightmare. Derren is a Bond villain, Rasputin and every boyfriend I've ever had. This show was the obvious anticlimax it was set up to be after his audacious stunt. But I don't want to see how he does it really. Perhaps I'm naive or lack curiosity, but the amazing thig is he did it. And, tiny and annoying as he is, he's done something none of us will ever do - not choose the right numbers for the lottery but explode the dreams of a greedy nation that these things are easy.

Cod Creole

The Crow Road. It's being repeated as part of BBC4's excellent Scottish season. I absolutely adore this series, and the book from whence it came. It's a wonderful and beguiling meditation on death, with philosophy student Prentice trying to understand the disappearance of his uncle Rory, his grandmother's death and his friend's suicide. Is it a conspiracy, is it god's plan, or is it all just random chance? His father (played to perfection by Bill Patterson in what is possibly my favourite TV character of all time) tells tall tales for a living - 'it's a father's privilege to fill his child's head with nonsense', and his uncle has created his own crackpot religion. They're all leading him nowhere but confusion and angst. Prentice's stubbornness, nostalgia and desire to see patterns in things that aren't there are all things I see strongly in myself, it was revelatory when I saw the series the first time (I read the book later, and wonder how I'd have felt about it if it had been the other way round).

I'll say it. Joe McFadden, who plays Prentice in his grunge-era get-up, is the most beautiful creature who ever lived. I served him once in a bookshop just after this was broadcast and was left with the feeling that I would never again interact with anyone quite so astonishingly stunning. Prentice's revoltingly successful stand-up brother, a young Dougray Scott, is a study in smarm. Peter Capaldi, as the ever-present ghost of Rory, adds a spooky and unsettling dimension to the drama. And his friend, Ashley, played by a smoudering Valerie Edmond, is so gloriously sexy, like all of Elastica crossed with Anna from This Life, that she is the most unbelievable left-on-the-shelf character since Kirsten Scott Thomas's in Four Weddings.

The whole production is gorgeous. From the opening green-screen WordPerfect typing and the haunting, evocative music that always makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, this is four weeks of glorious TV - period drama now! - that I have watched so many times I can join in with many of the scenes, and I notice have adopted many of the phrases as my own figures of speech without even realising. Roll on episode two, and that familar feeling of being pulled back in time and into a delicious, thought-provoking and enigmatic story the kind of drama we don't really see being made any more.