Songs of Praise
BBC1, Sunday September 7
I, along with perhaps around 80 per cent of the population of Great Britain, have never sat through an entire edition of Songs of Praise, despite the fact that it has been showing ever since I was old enough to be depressed on a Sunday evening.
It is supposed to be uplifting but I have always found the sound of the organ blasting out the introduction to the first hymn of the evening, sung by the good folk of St John's Church, Grantham or some such place, has me reaching for the tranquilisers.
However, last week's Songs of Praise was about the psalms, and it had Jewish content, courtesy of Rabbi Jonathan Romain and the choir of Maidenhead Synagogue. This was to be my introduction into a great Sunday evening institution - and, beer to hand (to protect my iconoclastic credentials), I actually watched it.
The good news, if you will pardon the expression, is that they have perked the programme up a bit. There is something for everyone. With the psalms' Hebrew ringing out in the background, Rabbi Romain spoke of how they were the backbone of the Jewish prayerbook. Were they relevant today? "We still feel the same emotions as we always did. These were written by ordinary people and we can identify over the millennia with their emotions," observed Rabbi Romain.
All fascinating stuff, but then we came up against a wall of earnest piety and another choir singing to a church organ so I turned the sound down just in case the neighbours could hear.
There was some stuff I didn't remember from the early 1970s. There were people banging drums and looking like they were enjoying themselves and there was a band singing psalms-as-power-ballad in an outdoor rock festival setting. The blissed-out audience looked like they all wanted to hold up lighters, and no doubt would have done had they not been God-fearing folk who wouldn't dream of smoking. Oh and there was a nice story about how the psalms had helped a family come through the trauma of their son David's premature birth. Moving stuff, but then the organ started again which meant I, like most of you out there, didn't quite make it through to the end of the show. Harry Secombe would certainly have livened things up a bit.
Harry and Paul
BBC1 Friday September 5
From the sacred to the profane and Harry and Paul on BBC1. Normally I duck under the sofa at the first sight of a Jewish stereotype, but Harry Enfield and the comic genius who is Paul Whitehouse have come up with a delightful and truly affectionate pastiche of two aging North London Jews, Clarence Sugarman and Henry Glass - Radio 3's rap DJs - in their new sketch show.
The pair assumed accents seemingly modelled on Michael Winner. The comedy, like in much of Enfield and Whitehouse's work, was in the incongruity. Glass spoke of how he was on the way back from "the Whetstone Garden Centre" when he heard of the shooting of a famous rapper. "No one is safe in the 'hood," he said, the 'hood in question being North-West London. Said Clarence: "Oh come on Henry, I don't think you were ever in danger from the South-Central turf wars, pootling along the A406 in the Micra at 28 miles per hour."
There was a cake in the studio - a chocolate Uzi, made by Muriel Green of Mill Hill, and Clarence was clearly seen sipping from a kiddush cup.
At the end of the show we caught up with the pair again. "Crikey Henry, I see you've pimped the Yaris. That'll turn a few heads in the Garden Suburb."
Laugh? I nearly dropped my platzel.