Peter Rhodes on improving Dickens, giving up mouthwash and the death of a whale
HERE we go again. Two vicious dogs tear a beagle to pieces in a park and their owner declares that they are 'good' and 'gentle' family pets. You've only to look at the history of dog attacks to know that you or your pets are more likely to be savaged by an 'old softie' than any other breed.
DICKENSIAN, screened over the last festive period, was probably the second-best costume drama the BBC has ever made. Its only flaw was to be shown in brief 30-minute episodes which hardly gave you time to settle down with a glass of porter and a muffin to enjoy the Victorian ambience. Netflix is now reshowing the series but has edited them into chunky and very satisfying one-hour episodes. Excellent.
THE best ever costume drama? For my money it's Bleak House starring Anna Maxwell Martin and Gillian Anderson and screened in 2005.
IT has not been a good time for oral hygiene. Last year US researchers claimed there was no proof that flossing prevents gum disease or stops cavities. Now comes a damning report from Harvard University suggesting that mouthwash could kill off beneficial microbes in the mouth which help protect us from obesity and diabetes. So you may have been wasting your time at the sink all these years. The good news is that we now have yet another excuse for getting fat. This pot belly? I've been using too much mouthwash.
BLUE PLANET II (BBC1) discovers a whale with her dead calf and suggests plastics and chemical pollution are to blame. But there was no autopsy or any other investigation and, as the British Plastics Federation now points out, there is “absolutely no supporting evidence” for the claim. This is all good news for it means we can now blame this sad little death on whatever fits our prejudices. The speed-camera lobby can blame speeding ships. The climate-change people can blame global warming. The alternative-medicine people can blame prescription drugs leaking into the ecosystem. But the most obvious culprit for the death of this baby whale in the distant Atlantic is, of course, the Tory cuts.
SOMETIMES you see a headline and it's like being transported back 100 years. A few days ago we had: "Tiger shot dead in Paris after escaping from circus."I wonder if Monsieur Bleriot witnessed the tragedy from his flying machine.
A READER describes a trip to a department store where she told the young shop assistant she was looking for cutlery. The word clearly meant nothing so the shopper explained she wanted knives, forks and spoons. "Oh, we do them," said the assistant brightly, "but we don't do cutlery."
THINGS you didn't know you couldn't manage without at Christmas. The Christmas Tree Skirt is a £15 wickerwork thingy that sits at the base of your tree, hiding the bucket from sight. The £10 Christmas Owl is a rafia representation of one of the few creatures that appears absolutely nowhere in the nativity story. More sightings of bizarre Xmas-related tat welcome.
