What does Britain’s favourite TV-viewing Parson Russell Terrier think of Pointless, My Dream Home, Top of the Pops, Human Universe, and Dr Jeff Rocky Mountain Vet?

Howard Spring reviews his week in TV!

Pointless

Pointless

This week I watched a quiz show called Pointless. It is quite complicated. There are some questions and the trick is to pick the question and correct answer that the fewest people knew so that you get the fewest points. And if you’re really lucky, you’re pointless and then you win. I did warn you it was complicated. It also has a host and a co-host. I’m not sure if they are the official titles, but the host is Alexander Armstrong (he is famous for Pimm’s commercials and stands up for the show) and Richard Osman (whose job is to sit down for the show).

We decided to watch this because this week the humans went to the taping of 8 Out Of 10 Cats (which I am going to watch next week!) and one of the guests was Richard Osman from Pointless!

My favourite category of questions was Transport. The contestants were given a list of vehicles and had to say which TV shows or movies they were in. The best answer (that is, the one that was almost completely unknown) was the Arkansas Chugabug, which everyone kept calling the Arkansaw Chugabug, including Alexander Armstrong, even though it was written up there on the screen. The Arkansas Chugabug is from a show called Wacky Races, which stars a dog called Muttley. Muttley is a bloodhound-pointer-Airedale-hunting dog mix. Which might be why he looks a bit like Finnegan Otterhound.

I learnt a lot of things on this show. I learnt that Richard Osman loves the Duke of Hazzard, that racecar is a palindrome, and that everyone agrees that Scrappy Doo ruined the Scooby Doo franchise.

This show was very complicated and there were no sheep or monkeys, two of my favourite things. But it wasn’t completely pointless because Human learnt how to use the BBC iPlayer with the new remote so that we could watch it.

My Dream Home

My Dream Home … is full of carpenter ants

My Dream Home is a show where two actors who are having trouble getting acting work  (I saw one of them as the bad boyfriend in a Christmas movie) show a couple a house, which they then buy so that one of the actors can tear it apart.

Carpenter ants … the horror, the horror

Usually the couple demands a dream kitchen, or a ball room, or a skating rink, so the actors tear the character features out of the home in the process and replace them with a lot of shiny things. But luckily no character features were harmed in the making of this episode. Unlike their films.

This episode featured some carpenter ants. But as far as carpentry goes, I could see that they were making a lot of wood shavings but absolutely no bookshelves or other useful items. So as carpenters go, they were pretty useless.

I’m not sure I will watch this show again, but I got to look at a lot of ants, which was interesting.

Top of the Pops

Top of the Pops

Top of the Pops is an old show which they are showing again. This episode was from 24 November 1983. I got to see a man called Mr Paul Young sing about the love of the common people.

I took a close look at the outfits

Some time back, Deputy and Auntie went to a taping of Top of the Pops. Atomic Kitten (not an actual kitten) had a number one so they did some singing. And another group called Muse did some singing too. Anyway, audience members were supposed to cheer constantly and the legend is that Deputy was almost thrown out for air clapping and saying “jolly good” instead of “yay”. Being in the audience is a huge responsibility. And Deputy wasn’t taking it seriously.

Anyway, I liked this show very much. I like music and I like watching people dancing. And I learnt a lot about history and good hair days.

Human Universe

Human Universe

This week I watched the last episode of Human Universe, which is hosted by a man with floppy hair, who is called Brian. I’m told he is very popular, but maybe they were talking about Brian the dog.

The doorway to the seed vault

One of the amazing things Brian did in this episode was to visit a huge vault for seeds that is deep deep underground. There was a weird little doorway in the side of the hill and then they went down down down into the ground to visit all the seeds inside a freezer.

Brian met a man called Cary Fowler who was very interesting. Brian said that some people call the seed vault the Doomsday vault. But Cary said it was the opposite. He said that the vault means none of these species will become extinct. So he said it is like a big positive sign: “It represents a problem that didn’t happen”. That is a very nice way to look at things.

And at the end of the show, Brian went to the top of Greenwich Park. And I like parks. So this was quite a good show.

Dr Jeff – Rocky Mountain Vet

Dr Jeff – Rocky Mountain Vet

This week I found a new show called Dr Jeff – Rocky Mountain Vet. I watched this show for obvious reasons … the star is called Jeff!

Dr Jeff

Dr Jeff has a practice called Planned Pethood Plus Inc and they have 30 people working there because they have 70,000 patients. That still seems like a lot of patients. The waiting room didn’t look that big.

In this episode Dr Jeff saw Jasper the Australian Shepherd, Carmel the ginger and white cat, Gandalf the African Pied Crow, and a lot of piglets and Highland cows.

Carmel the cat

Carmel’s human adopted him after she lost her husband. She said Carmel was a lifeline to her and her little boy and so she was really worried that he was so sick. Carmel had an unhealthy habit of eating rubber bands so they wondered if he had swallowed something. When they x-rayed they discovered a big object in his belly, so they operated and got out one of those decorative stones from a planter! Luckily it hadn’t been in there that long, and Carmel made a complete recovery!

Gandalf the crow came in to get his nails done. He was a very good patient and kept wanting to nibble the nail clippers. The vet tech was a bit scared of him. She said it was because she had seen Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Good thing she hadn’t seen 28 Days Later!

Yampa Valley Farm, Colorado

Dr Jeff then went to the Yampa Valley Farm with Hector the vet tech. It was a very nice farm. All the pigs lived outdoors in groups and Dr Jeff described it as “pig heaven”. Although that might be because most of them were going to end up in heaven sooner rather than later.

Lots of cows

The farmer also had a herd of Highland Cows and Dr Jeff was giving them ultrasounds to see if they were pregnant. The good news was that a new generation of Highland Cows was definitely on its way.

Highland Cows

My favourite story was Jasper, the 7 year old Australian Shepherd.

Jasper the Australian Shepherd

Jasper had a big lump on his back leg and was having trouble walking. Jasper’s human described him as her whole family and she was very worried about him. She thought it was a broken bone but it turned out to be cancer.

Jasper after surgery

Fortunately the cancer hadn’t spread to the lungs, so Dr Jeff operated on Jasper the next day. When they operated they found that the lump had spread right through the knee and was inoperable, so they had to amputate his leg to get all the cancer out.

Jasper and his human

The operation went very well and Jasper was so happy to see his human when she came to pick him up, he was smiling from ear to ear!

Jasper doing zoomies on three legs

I loved this show. I got to see cows, cats, birds, lizards, pigs, dogs … it was amazing. It was so good that I didn’t even notice that it didn’t have any monkeys.