TV Review: Wimbledon, BBC Channels, All Week Rod Hull: A Bird in the Hand, Channel 4, Thursday; The Human Senses, BBC1, Monday;Townlands: Eye of the Storm, RTÉ1, Wednesday; Fine Gael: A Family at War, RTÉ1, Sunday.
Velcome to Wombledon, where Boris Becker has proved to be an entertaining addition to the coverage. His hair is static electricity's greatest achievement. His accent is a nostalgic throwback to a bygone age of comedic national stereotypes. No one can be certain of quite what Boris is saying.
There is plenty of intonation, but few recognisable words. There is animation, but little enunciation. I don't want be harsh on a man delivering a commentary in a foreign tongue, but you get the sense that whatever it is that he is saying, it would translate into any language as "the bleeding obvious".
Presenter John Inverdale knows the routine. "Boris, is this Tim's year?" he will ask. Boris will think about it for a moment, consider his response carefully and give an appropriate answer.
"Well," he will say. "Timsschecondshervischabeegproublem." Inverdale, an unflappable anchor with the air of a man posing for an underwear catalogue, has developed a sixth sense for all this and knows intuitively when Boris has ended his sentence and, more importantly, that it's not wise to ask any follow-up questions.
Regardless, the BBC is so fond of Boris that it has made room in the commentary box for him, so that there are now three commentators for some matches. When the presenter visits the commentary team after a match, we see them all squeezed together in a row, like Apollo astronauts waiting for someone to start the countdown.
It hit zero for Tim Henman on Thursday. Henman is a player whose personality is directly inverse to the colour and passion of those who support him. The public nicknamed him Tiger, but that's down to wishful thinking.
The BBC has played a clever game this year, talking up Henman's chances while simultaneously reminding the British nation of how little attention he is receiving elsewhere. There were eight countries represented in the quarter-finals, and the BBC visited journalists from each of these to ask how much coverage they have given to Henman. The shrug of the shoulders, it was confirmed, transcends all language barriers.
As the top players fell away, the BBC briefly dared to dream. "Is this Henman's year?" Inverdale or Sue Barker would ask anyone passing their window. Unfortunately, in the end Henman had to play someone much better than him. His opponent, Sébastien Grosjean, played dashing tennis. He rescued long-lost points, smashed outrageous winners and reduced the crowd to awed applause.
"He could play blindfolded!" suggested Pat Cash.
"Heeschnoteevenloukingatzecourt," added Boris; which was exactly what Tim Henman was thinking.
Warren Mitchell - Alf Garnett to you and me - turned up in the surprisingly enchanting trash biography that was Rod Hull: A Bird in the Hand. Rod, it transpires, had more than one bird in the hand. In the early days of his career, while working under Mitchell, he would pluck a girl from the audience, her boyfriend in tow, and invite them to meet the star of the show. Mitchell's job was to distract the fella, while Rod got the girl's number. "I was pimping for Rod Hull!" gasped Mitchell, in what might be the most unlikely statement you will hear on television this year.
Rod, it was suggested by one friend, did not need Emu as any sort of compensation for a deficiency elsewhere. "He was, erm, quite, ha-ha, big in the, eh, man department. Someone once saw him crawling around on all fives." During his shows with Emu, Rod used to grab female audience members on the breasts and lift their skirts. His producer pointed out, with some disgust, that it was Rod's hand, not Emu's beak, which was really doing all the grabbing. Rod agreed with him, and went out and did it again the next night.
Rod hated the bird, but enjoyed certain benefits of his fame. His rampant promiscuity contributed to the break-up of two marriages. "ROD FINALLY GETS HIS BIRD," said the headlines on the day of his second wedding. Given the puns available, nobody stopped to suggest that his pecker was getting him into trouble. Hull, for those too young to believe such a thing possible, had a 20-year career and earned millions from a 10-minute comedy sketch that involved assaulting celebrities with a mute avian puppet.
Unfortunately, the height of Hull's spending power - he bought a 32-bed mansion in 1987 - coincided with the trough of his earning power. He lost it all: wife, kids, house, television show. He ended up in a derelict cottage, where he spent his time writing poetry, growing vegetables and chasing younger women.
He died in 1999 after falling off the roof while fixing the television aerial. There were few celebrities at his funeral and no Emu, but there was a host of mysterious female mourners.
The Human Senses is presented by Nigel Marvern, a zoologist with David Bellamy's voice, Alan Titchmarsh's face and a drunk's courage. When we first met him he was being chased by a bear, having taunted it with a pot of honey. Then he prodded a skunk until it lifted its tail and sprayed him. It was what he wanted, of course. It is the current fashion of this species of presenter to approach the awesome power of nature, kick it and then run away. The animal kingdom must be near breaking point, its toughest predators fed up of being asked to step outside by khaki-covered, cork-hatted TV scientists with a death wish. One of these days a shark or a snake or a bear is going to turn around and eat one of them.
Of course, the camera only made it look as if a bear was chasing Marvern. It also made it look as if he had transmogrified into a dog, that it had opened up his brain and taken a peek inside and that it was perched on a nasal hair as molecules whizzed by. It's that sort of science, in which the facts are the things that fill the short gaps between the special effects. This first episode dealt with the sense of smell. Smell, we learned, is important to us. It stops us from eating rotting meat, among other things. What other things? I don't know. Go read a book.
Smell has proved very useful to the evolution of life on earth, but of no help whatsoever to the evolution of television. In this programme, we watched people put their noses into jars containing the essence of rotting flesh, parfum du vomit and actual eau du toilette. But for all the wonders of technology there is no brown button on the remote control that will allow you to smell what they're smelling. Marvern visited Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, where they busy themselves creating the world's worst smell. He allowed himself to be exposed to the result. They call it Stench Soup. Its recipe is a secret, but includes the concentrated smell of 1,000 unwashed toilets. Unless you watched the programme while sitting in the toilets at Heuston Station it will all have been a bit lost on you.
In the impressive short documentary, Eye of the Storm, we met Richard Fitzgerald and Gabe Davies. Richard owns a surf store in Bundoran, Co Donegal, a place he claims is the world's best surfing spot. He can ride a wave the size of a house with the unruffled air of someone popping down to the shops. Richard, believe it or not, has webbed feet. Rather more impressive was how, despite living all year round in Donegal, when he removed his T-shirt he displayed a healthy tan that did not stop dead at his elbow or curve sharply about his neck.
Gabe, meanwhile, is a professional surfer, who practises his trade in Newcastle in the north-east of England, where the water is filthy but there are fewer people to run over.
Gabe travels the world with his girl, looking for the biggest waves across the waters of the world. "His office," said his girlfriend, "is the beach and the ocean." My office is a desk with a flooded gutter outside the window. Stop taunting.
The week's highlight remains Fine Gael: A Family At War. It is hardly a title that sets the heart a-flutter, but turns out to becaviar in a yellow pack. It is television that you approach while pinching your nose, closing your eyes and opening wide, but from which you skip away giddy with information. It is a sharp and genuinely entertaining version of Fine Gael as docu-soap opera, and revels in a knowing accompaniment of songs. A Family At War makes Fine Gael interesting. No one should underestimate that achievement.
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