TV Preview, Peter Kay's Car Share: Always charming, funny and worth watching

Bank holidays are supposed to feature some sort of “special” TV, and I think few disagree that the finale (we think) of Peter Kay’s Car Share counts as a very special event indeed – almost as big as the royal wedding.

Ever since we first encountered Kay as the unforgettable Brian Potter in Channel 4’s Phoenix Nights (first broadcast a sobering 17 years ago), he has proved to be an extraordinarily inventive, versatile and risk-taking performer and writer, none more so than in the unscripted edition shown on the last bank holiday weekend.

Anyway, this episode promises to be the one where the final resolution of the will-they-won’t-they love thingy between John (Pater Kay) and Kayleigh (Sian Gibson) is resolved, one way or t’other. There’s a repeat of the last episode of the second series to cue things up immediately before.

Always charming, always funny, always worth watching, Car Share has been a huge success for Kay, for Gibson, for Fiat (whose scarlet 500L car is featured so prominently) and for BBC head of comedy Shane Allen, who seems to behind every one of the BBC; s recent tsunami of funny telly (including personal favourites People Just Do Nothing and This Country). Where next for Kay? Where next for Allen? I can’t wait to see.

Hardly less of national treasure than Kay is Anthony Hopkins. You may have noticed the coverage about his private life and relationship with his daughter, which is of course no one’s business but his own, except that Hopkins seems happy to discuss it quite candidly. His earthly conclusion, “life is cold”, is one that some of us will find some sympathy with.

You might, I say steering back to the telly schedules, call it a Shakespearean view of the world, appropriate as Hopkins is back on our screens this week as King Lear, someone who also had trouble with sorting out his relationship with his daughters. Television adaptations of Shakespeare have always promised much – big names, expensive productions, classy sets – but often enough delivered very little. Analysing why is a bit beyond me, though I suppose the fact that Shakey wrote for the theatre, and indeed the theatre in the round, rather than a small screen version may have soothing to do with it.

Anyway, hope springs eternal, and even for those bored by Shakespeare and who find it difficult to keep up with the Tudor references, this one ought to be worth a go. Hopkins as Lear is joined by Emma Thompson (Goneril), Jim Broadbent (Gloucester), Jim Carter (Kent) and Karl Johnson (the Fool), so you can’t fault the effort there. Noelette Buckley produced and Richard Eyre, no less, directed. I wonder how they’ll pluck the vile jelly out?

As has been noted, the Thorpe affair was a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, one that was played out on TV news bulletins, documentaries and in the newspapers and magazines during the fag end of the 1970s. It was a huge, spectacular, incredible story that everything in it from sodomy (illegal during the times under discussion), a Great Dane named Rinka being given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on Porlock Hill, the leader of the Liberal Party, the Rt Hon Jeremy Thorpe MP, the South African secret service, a Bahamas-based millionaire and the most notorious summing-up by a senior judge in the 20th century. And a conspiracy to murder.

Hugh Grant as Thorpe and the rest of the cast are exceptionally strong case make it come more vividly alive now, four decades on, than it did even at the time. It is a story told with fresh allure and style, and episode two is “outed” on Sunday night. Well worth catching.

I’m afraid I’m not sure I can say the same for The Battle for Britain’s Heroes. Channel 4 has asked Afua Hirsch to offer her views on some great national heroes and whether they should be honoured unconditionally and with banknotes, statues and the like. So I’m expecting Churchill, Nelson, Rhodes and others to come in for the treatment.

Great, and the acute and engaging Hirsch will make a decent job of it, and see off Jacob Rees-Mogg, but I’m just a bit tired of it all. I suppose I mean to say I’ve heard it all before, and, while open as ever to revolutionary ideas, I’ve my doubts about whether even Ms Hirsch can make this one fresh as a daisy.

As an alternative, and a positive one, you could turn to Africa’s Great Civilisations (BBC4), where literary scholar Henry Louis Gates jr reminds us just how civilised and advanced parts of Africa were before the Europeans got their hands on most of it and persuaded themselves, and generations after, that it was some sort of inevitable mission to civilise and colonise the rest of the world. No such thing, in fact. A better alternative is the climacteric of The Split, a fine drama starring Nicola Walker, Anthony Head and Stephen Mangan: it’s about lawyers and adultery, with a vaguely Learesque theme of father and daughters tensions, so I think you’ll realise there can be few happy endings.

I have mixed feelings about Tracey Ullman “doing” Michael Gove in her new series of Tracey Breaks the News. Although an “impressions” show, which is usually a bad start, Ullman’s previous takes on the news have been fairly sharp and satirical, so I’ve got high hopes for this one.

The pre-publicity suggest she has transformed herself into the slightly bulbous Gove with remarkable success; but can she capture that complex personality with it? Maybe she should get someone to “do” Sarah Vine (Mrs Gove) as well. Tracey takes on the Friday night BBC lampoon baton from Have I Got News for You, which ends its run this week.

Jonathan Meades is, very possibly, the wisest man in Britain. Some of us await his verdicts on our times with the same rapt anticipation that ancient Britons used to reserve for their druids, except, of course, that Meades is no sham relying in superstitious and show to beguile and donate us; he uses understatement, big words and rational thought instead.

Anyway, by having a go at jargon and the debasement of English, a task that others have failed too often, he is our last great hope, if that’s not too much of a cliche.

Peter Kay’s Car Share (Monday, 10pm); King Lear (BBC2, Monday 9.30pm); A Very English Scandal (BBC1, Sunday 9pm); The Battle for Britain’s Heroes (Channel 4, Tuesday 9pm), Africa’s Great Civilisations (BBC4, Tuesday 10pm), The Split (BBC1, Tuesday 9pm), Tracey Breaks the News (BBC1, Friday 9.30pm), Jonathan Meades on Jargon (Sunday, BBC4 10.30pm)