Have you ever watched American Idol? Seven or eight years ago, while I was under house arrest for breeding with the enemy, I stuck it out – call it the Cowell factor if you like. Maybe I was homesick. A procession of marathons passed slowly by with the occasional highlight – hardly worth the effort in retrospect.
However, TV3 Puls, inspired by the way millennials view by the season not the episode, is showing 12 episodes this week. Twelve! In five days, from Sunday 10:35, and then daily at 21:05, it will take you from the final 20 to the final six.
Now in its 12th year, American Idol has gone downhill since Cowell’s departure, but yet it has an immortality complex, despite being beaten by The Amazing Race at the Emmys eight times since 2001, where it has never managed to win.
Are awards everything? The Philadelphia Inquirer, in its review of the 2011 crime series Person of Interest (K5, Wed 20:00), certainly seems to think so. Applauding its creator, the screenwriter Jonathan Nolan, the younger brother of Batman and Inception director Christopher, it gushed: “Of course, it all sounds preposterous, but so did a movie about a guy who remembered everything backward, and Jonathan Nolan was nominated for a writing Oscar for Memento.”
With 65 on Metacritic, the series is a distant relation of Minority Report, but this time with a computer, not pre-cogs, foretelling violent acts. Fuelled by another creepy performance by Michael Emerson (it won’t surprise you that his character Ben was only supposed to be in Lost for a few episodes, but ended up becoming the main antagonist), who is aided by Jim Caviezel (Passion of the Christ), it is intriguing, even though the premise is preposterous.
Elsewhere, UK period drama Call the Midwife (SVT1, Sun 21:00) is back for a second series; Romario Tackles Brazil (BBC World, Sat 12:30 or 17:30) sees the former star prove he’s just as tenacious off the pitch; there’s another chance to see the first episodes of Unforgiven (BBC Ent, Sat 22:00), Mr Selfridge (DR1, Sat 19:55) and Scott & Bailey (SVT4, Wed 23:00); and Andrew Graham-Dixon makes art accessible in an interesting way in In the Shadow of Hitler (BBC World, Sat 18:10 or 23:10).
Read this week's full selection of English-language TV listings on page G20 of our InOut section.
