Come on Tim

Yay. I have home internet access again. Finally. It's a little dodgy in that it keeps cutting out, and I'm only getting 1.7Mbps when I should be getting 6.5, but apart from that, I'm very happy.

Over the past couple of months, the stresses and strains of moving have put my futile television rage on the back burner. Why should I get angry about that advert about Mickey, ( you know, the ponce with different hairstyles), when my lawyer is sitting on his behind doing nothing all day unless I phone him every half hour? And what's the problem with that frightening lady singing about how I've got to think! About my currentaccount, today! every quarter of an hour while there is a seller who won't sign a house over, just because she's feeling reluctant even though there's been an agreement to sell FOR THE LAST FOUR MONTHS?

Yes, I can now once again concentrate on the serious issues affecting the world, and I'd like to start by pointing out how annoying Tim Vincent's narration is on BBC2's latest early evening cooking show, Kitchen Criminals (or Kitchen Criminils if you're ex-Tory leader Michael Howard).

It's all fairly standard stuff. Bad cooks chosen by professional chefs. Professional chefs then try to train bad cooks to be good cooks. Every day the worst bad cook goes home. At the end the remaining bad cooks will try to fool critics into thinking they're git good chefs. It's very simple and self-explanatory. And it's ideal for my weeknight dinnertime viewing (cf Masterchef Goes Large, Great British Menu. I'm pathetic, me).

So someone, and I think it'll be the same person who thought that Masterchef Goes Large needs a narrator, thought that this programme needs a narrator. And someone decided that the narrator should speak at all times explaining exactly what we can see with our own eyes, and reminding us what has just happened two minutes ago. The narrator also speculates as to what might happen next given past performances.

So Angela Hartnett, "one of Britain's top female chefs", is teaching her Kitchen Criminils how to fillet a bit of fish. It's fairly obvious that this is what's happening, she's showing them how to fillet a fish, and she's actually said, "I'm going to show you how to fillet this fish." But the narrator (played by Tim Vincent out of Blue Peter) then says "Angela Hartnett shows the Kitchen Criminals how to fillet a fish. They'll need to pay close attention to this as at the end of the day, the Kitchen Criminal who has made the most mistakes will be going home."

"Martha," says Angela, "come over here and help me scrape the scales away here." To which Tim Vincent says, "Angela asks Martha to help her scrape the scales away. Mortgage broker Martha has struggled throughout the week for consistency, will she be able to concentrate enough to be able to keep her place today?"

Tim, I know you're not writing this yourself, but please will you shut up. I don't need to be told what I can see and hear. I do not need to be reminded about what happened ten minutes ago. Your preview of the last half of the show is well meaning but not necessary for a half hour programme. Stop talking about Kitchen Zeroes becoming Kitchen Heroes. I know it rhymes, but it's not very clever when you say it every episode. And finally, work out one way of pronouncing the word "cook" and then stick with it. "Cuck, Coook, Cerk, Ceck." Just choose one.

Viewing of not much interest over the past few days:

• I've been watching this mini-series on Sky One. It's probably a repeat. Final Days of Planet Earth. It's rubbish and it really should be for kids, but it's been on at midnight last week. You've got some bloke from Ally McBeal (How I hated that programme, with the way they all went to the bar and sang and danced of an evening with that awful singer Vonda Shepard bawling her way through some dreadful cover of a Barry White song, not that I ever watched an episode), that Daryl Hannah lass and something about a conspiracy involving earthquakes and sinkholes and local government. And the preview summary gave away most of the plot anyway thanks to the idiots who write them having absolutely no sense of drama.
• The IT Crowd. Superb. There were many very amusing moments in last week's episode. I could recount them but they wouldn't translate well to the page, especially when I'm involved.

Davie is currently on holiday in Austria so he won't be blogging this week. Fans of sharp snappy reviews of soap operas will therefore have to make do with long drawn out reviews of obscure science fiction and cookery programmes. Many apologies.