Tight Tuesday: Rent Private Practice Series One for just 99p!

Another Tuesday, another huge discount offer as selected by YOU, our lovely viewers. This week the medical staff of the Oceanside Wellness Centre kicked butt in the voting chart, which means for one day only (I mean today), you can rent the entire of Series One for a measly 99 English pence.

Also, did you know Private Practice is a spin off from Grey's Anatomy? You can have that for free. Talking of Grey's, you can vote for next week's Tight Tuesday candidate now and Grey's Series Three is one of the contenders, including Ugly Betty Series Three, The Hills Series Two and Robin Hood Series Two. Happy voting!

Goodbye Downton Abbey, Hello Sense and Sensibility

It's a truth universally acknowledged every TV period drama is in need of a galaxy actors to fill out the extravagant cast lists. Well known English actors rub shoulders with luminous ingenues and old sitcom stars looking for a new lease of life. All supported by bevvy of people you recognise from somewhere else, but can't quite put your finger on where that somewhere was...

ITV's amazing and now sadly-departed Downton Abbey was no exception, mixing perennial bustle-botherers Dame Maggie Smith and Hugh Bonneville with Lovejoy's Phyllis Logan and Every Decreasing Circle's Penelope Wilton. And then there was floppy-haired, blue-eyed Dan Stevens.

"Who?" I hear you ask. He played Matthew Crawley, the distinctly non-U Lord Grantham-in-waiting constantly rebuffed by Lady Mary, whilst the godawful Lady Sybil lurked in the wings with a face that could sour milk.

As it turns out he's no stranger to sporting a Corinthian bouffant, or to being spurned by ladies in bonnets. Not strictly speaking "costume", his big break came playing Nick Guest, the lead in Alan Hollingshurst's tale of Eighties excess The Line of Beauty - although there is an argument massive shoulder pads, ZX Spectrums and a love of Thatcher are so out of date they could be considered "Period".

Far more breeches and barouche boxes were his turns in the BBC's 2006 version of Dracula, and the US TV mini-series version of Frankenstein alongside Matt Goss. No, really.

However, if you want to re-live the doe-eyed glory of Matthew Crawley looking for love, may I direct your attention to his star turn as Edward Ferrars in the sexed-up version of Sense and Sensibility?

You may think you don't need to look beyond the Emma Thompson/Kate Winslett version, but this 2008 BBC three-parter brings a whole new melancholy and humanism to the piece, as well as containing Daisy Haggard's gloriously over-the-top Miss Steele.

So if you're missing Downton Abbey, why not scratch that itch with a visit to Barton Park and Donwell Abbey? I warrant you'll find it most felicitous...

Happy Birthday Gordon!

Seesaw would like to say a very big Happy 44th Birthday to award-winning celebrity chef and master of the expletive-laden torrent of histrionic abuse - Mr Gordon James Ramsay.

The Scottish-born chef is a Michelin-starred restauranteur, best-selling author, and one of the UK’s most (and least) popular TV personalities, behind a string of hits including the SeeSaw favourites Ramsay’s Best Restaurant, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmare, and Gordon Ramsay’s F Word.

However, what makes Gordon interesting to watch is not just his love of exquisite French cuisine or his passion for perfectly produced food, but his well-seasoned delivery of the English language with a dash of ‘subtle’ arrogance. It may all just be a carefully constructed schtick to keep us on our toes, but there are few people more controversial or confrontational on television. Can you see Clarkson going toe-to-toe with former cabinet minister Edwina Currie, with the following verbal haymaker "Do you always two-time people Edwina? First, you're shagging a prime minister and now you're shagging me up the arse from behind?" It's his blend of the familiar and the insulting that make for compelling TV.

Things have not been all plain-sailing for Mr Ramsay over the last year, with his marriage on the rocks, his restaurants suffering some PR disasters, and now his long-term business partner (and father-in-law) leaving acrimoniously, but you know he'll bounce back - after giving himself a stern talking to no doubt.

Join Seesaw in celebrating the birthday boy's 44th year, and let us know your favourite Gordon Ramsay insult. Can you top this attack on the United States? "The problem with Yanks is they are wimps". Get stuck in...

Always Outnumbered, often outdone

"Never work with children or animals." So said that most misanthropic and quoteworthy of comics, W.C. Fields, shortly before upping sticks to join Valerie Singleton, John Noakes and Shep clearing excrement off Blue Peter's studio floor. We joke, we kid, of course. Whether working with children is silly billy or not hasn't stopped the Beeb from giving us a televisual family feast of dysfunctional parenting in suburbia over the last 25 years. If the nineties belonged to 2point4 Children, and the noughties My Family, then the now-ties (bear with us) belong very much to Outnumbered.

Having dropped the dead donkey, creators Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin have swapped sniping at Globelink for squabbling at home with the Brockmans. But what do we actually know about these strained relations other than that the patriarch is exactly 50 per cent of Punt and Dennis and even less of The Mary Whitehouse Experience?

Playing the numbers game

O formal scripts for the kids
We're all used to hearing about the improvisational skills of 'schmohawk' Larry David and friends in HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, but the Brockman kids - Jake, Ben and Karen - are not saddled with too much in the way of lines either. Armed with only the basic outline of scenes, the kids are encouraged to do what they do best. Yep, 'act' like kids. Simples.

1 house
And a very nice one too. Seemingly in an unnamed leafy suburb of Londonshire. But don't let the tidy Victorian facade fool you. Within the confines of those four walls can be found a kind of mayhem that kinsfolk across the country can empathise with. Don't fret - you're not alone in not being able to find the phone when it ring-a-dings. It's under the ironing, cloth ears.

2 parents
Sue and Pete are the agonising 'Mum' and 'Dad'. Pete is an inner city history teacher, forlornly wrestling with political correctness gone mad and an image-obsessed headmaster, while Sue makes a full-time job of being a part-time PA. Together they are driven to distraction by an offspring overload. Sometimes Google really doesn't have the answer.

3 children
A finer triumvirate of adult-baiters you're never likely to see. There's the sulky adolescent eldest, the mad little middle man with a bewildering thirst for lying, and the doe-eyed poppet, brimful of barrister-like inquiry. All resplendently showcasing that unerring childish ability to say exactly what they think. At exactly the wrong time.

4 million viewers...
for the first ever episode aired in 2008. A solid start. A foundation on which a very successful house was built. As well as being critically lauded, the show's stars have had to get used to picking up it's fair share of gongs too. Oh gosh. If it's not careful it's going to get it's very own American remake. Oh golly gosh.

5 pounds...
was the price Dad had to pay for the privilege of wresting his power drill back from Ben. Really, Dad ought to man-up a tad where Ben is concerned. Especially when Dad is trying to reason with him in public and Ben screams to anyone that will listen that Dad isn't his dad. Come on Dad, show him who's the daddy.

6 episodes...
in the first series. The magic number according to to 'The Book of British Comedy Gold'. If you don't believe us read the chapters on Fawlty Towers, The Office, and, erm, The Inbetweeners. We won't mention that series two slips in an episode too many and move swiftly on to the fact that series three returns to the joy of six.

7 is bath and bedtime
'Operation Early Night' never really works out for Sue and Pete, much to Pete's chagrin. Domestic evening bliss, where the kids are sound asleep and glasses of fine red wine flow are some kind of untouchable utopia for Mr and Mrs Brockham. Better then to resign themselves to dealing with blocked waste disposal units, cold-callers and unwanted guests.

8 times...
a day that Ben the brat demands to watch Little Britain. Dad certainly doesn't share his son's appreciation of messrs. Lucas and Walliams - but we certainly shall not frown upon tube obsessions of the chortling kind, unhealthy or otherwise. Yeah, I know.

9 is how old Karen will be next birthday
The show's undoubted jewel in the crown is growing up on screen - but she's still a little angel, in the style of Drew Barrymore circa E.T. With devilish questions any mastermind would have difficulty answering: "What's a hypocrite?"; "Do you believe in God?"; "Can I keep a nit for a pet?"; What's a Nazi?". At least she is putting off running away from home "'til morning."

10 feet...
and five heads; 564 fibs; a dozen disciplinary hearings; 345 unread work emails; one first day at secondary school; two types of Indian; 58 missed phone calls from granddad; 26 odd socks; 18 uneaten peas on a plate; no 40 winks; countless arguments and a ton of tears. Welcome to parenthood.

We at Seesaw Towers can't be held responsible for the validity of the figures published above. But no children were harmed in the making of this blog. Sorry W.C.

Five reasons why Channel 4 comedy fans should love Whites

Anyway you look at it, in Blighty the comedy world divides into two kingdoms - the BBC's 'safe' sitcoms and Channel 4's 'street' sketch shows. You either love The Inbetweeners and PhoneShop OR you're a massive fan of Miranda and The Armstrong & Miller Show, and never the twain shall meet. Unless the sight of Windsor Davies and Donald Sinden running competing antique shops pushes your laughter buttons of course.

However this split isn't as cut and dried as it might seem. After all Armstrong & Miller, Mitchell & Webb, Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse all started out on C4 before making the great leap to Auntie Beeb. Hidden away in the schedules over the last six weeks, ignored in the great Inbetweeners/PhoneShop love-in, was another group of C4 rebels with a brand new, criminally ignored comedy that really should've been embraced by more people, particularly by fans of Peep Show.

The first series of Whites finished last night with an Eighties-themed staff party, a broken engagement, a broadcast conversation about low sperm motility and a enough loose ends to demand a second series. And when it does arrive here are five reasons why you hardcore C4 comedy heads should tune in:

1. It's written by Matt King. Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? King is Channel 4 through and through, with appearances in Dogface, Star Stories, City of Vice (really!) and Skins, but he's best known as Peep Show's resident drug baron and one half of Curse These Metal Hands, Super Hans. Not only did he write it but King also plays suitably shady meat supplier Melvin, who seems to have run down most of his products in his van.

2. It's almost entirely staffed by C4 comedy stalwarts: Kevin Bishop makes a guest appearance, The IT Crowd's Katherine Parkinson plays put-upon maitre d' Caroline, Green Wing and Smack the Pony's Darren Boyd is a sous chef with a low sperm count, Isy Suttie aka Peep Show's Dobby is a waitress with a very weak grip on reality and, of course, Alan Davies is head chef Roland White. Didn't you know Alan's first TV show was Channel 4's One for the Road? Check out that inappropriate picture!

3. The hotel kitchen is every bit as horrific as Green Wing's East Hampton Hospital Trust, the Sutton High Street Branch of PhoneShop and the former business behemoth that was JLB Credit, and staffed by equally grotesque characters.

4. The fact it was broadcast at nine on a Tuesday would suggest the BBC weren't sure what they had on their hands. Was it a drama with some comic elements, or a comedy with a dramatic arc tying the episodes together? It's certainly less slapstick and accessible than their usual early evening output and closer to the more recent strand of darker, bleaker shows like Him and Her and Getting On.

5. Surely given the fact nearly all of Channel 4's output is cookery shows these days, a comedy taking the piss, written by a Channel 4 star and populated by great comedians from brilliant Channel 4 shows should be right up your street?

If you fancy catching up on a hidden gem, the whole series is still available on iPlayer. Check it out and let us know what you think...

From The Archive: The Solitary Life of Cranes

When your resident factual expert isn’t busy grooming his beard and nibbling on scotch eggs, he likes to spend his time hunting through tellyland for the more obscure documentaries. Sure, we all love to watch some Attenborough or catch up on Hitler’s secret shark, but there’s something satisfying about learning something entirely new, isn’t there?

Which brings me neatly to the (award winning) Solitary Life of Cranes which I discovered recently, nestled deep in the SeeSaw vaults with the VHS tapes and IT department.

There are three layers to every city: The network of tunnels beneath our feet, street level, and the buildings that bend into the sky. And voyeuristically perched above all of these are a small group of isolated people  peering down from their glass bottomed cabs. Anonymous, forgotten, and disregarded by the marching feet below them, crane drivers see the world from a God-like perspective.

You see these little glimpses of people's lives as they go past, and views you're never going to see anywhere else of city life, looking down on it. And that has probably given me a really different perspective on life...it's just odd little vignettes of people's lives that make you smile

If you suffer from vertigo being a crane operator probably isn’t the job for you, and yet as you descend into the tube after a day in an office, you can’t help but feel envious of the drivers as they clamber hundreds of feet to work every morning. The sense of wonder they describe is contagious. There's a beautiful paradox in the crane driver, sat alone in a glass cabinet and yet completely out of view, and while it's easy to believe they lead a solitary life, the truth appears far from it.

Set to a mesmerizing electronic-mechanical soundtrack that’s part Sigur Ros part Portishead, this isn’t a documentary about construction, it is poetry and it might just change the way you look at your surroundings forever.

The Ouch Factor

This weekend saw another X Factor contestant being sent to the great record label in the sky, or the now equivalent to what would have been the bargain bin at Woolies.
Halloween weekend meant that some (not all) of the contestants got to dress up in random spooky style costumes and sing a Halloween style song. To be fair certain contestants didn’t look any different to usual (Wagner anyone?).

Sticking with the theme, there were some horrific performances and some half decent ones:
- Aiden Grimshaw sang Thriller and made it sound like a funeral song, not the upbeat fun song that it actually is – snorefest.
- Katie Waisell looked kind of like a certain Bride of Wildenstein, but actually sang quite well. Even if she did look like her hair was going to make her topple over at any point.
- Wagner was out of tune, out of synch. But is he out of the show? Not this week.
- Belle Amie sang “I’m your Venus etc etc”. Who associates that song with anything but women shaving their legs nowadays? Bad choice of song, bad, well everything really.
- Cher Lloyd had the stand out performance of the night, which somehow got Shakespeare’s Sister back into the top ten. She still looks like a bad Cheryl clone though.

During the results show, the contestants got to sing with Bon Jovi, and when I say sing, I mean lip synch to their pre-recorded backing vocals. Then Jamiroquai sang their new song, whilst Cheryl gave Jay-Kay daggers the whole performance. Apparently he insulted her before the show. Who knows what was said but her and Danni Minogue made a point of not being impressed with him, they didn’t even stand up to clap after the performance as they always do for guests on the show. Maybe he told her she was too skinny? Or that he didn’t like her tattoo? Who knows... Next up: Rihanna, Good performance overall, but she did have bright red ears, I think that her hair dye may have seeped onto them.

The bottom two this week were Belle Amie and Katie Waisell. They did the standard sing off, and to be fair Katie out sung the girls with ease, Belle Amie hurt my ears slightly. So it was bye bye Belle Amie, and Katie lives to sing another week/generate more press for the show.