26 April 2021 • 7:00pm
Michael Portillo in Oxford
Credit: BBC
The nation’s best-dressed travel guide returned to our screens in
Great British Railway Journeys (BBC Two). Michael Portillo is my guilty television pleasure. Each episode holds such promise: the question of where he’s going to go is secondary to the question of what he’s going to wear.
Our hero started out in tangerine trousers and green jacket, but fans of Portillo’s wardrobe didn’t have long to wait before he visited a gentlemen’s outfitters and emerged from the changing room in Oxford bags, blazer and straw boater. Who would have thought that our former Defence Secretary would add so much gaiety to the nation?
TV guide: 23 of the best shows to watch this week, beginning tonight Rory O’Connell, Seven Drunken Nights, Gunplot, Open for Business, Alan Patridge, Fomhuireán na bhFininí, The Mosquito Coast, Tom Clancy s Without Remorse
about 4 hours ago
Sunday, TG4, 9.30pm The Mighty Ocean opens a musical dialogue between humankind and the environment, touching on the entrancing power of the sea, while questioning our destructive influence on the endangered oceans. The piece, scored for 12 musicians, features Irish traditional legends Máirtín O’Connor, Garry O Briain, Cathal Hayden, Seamie O’Dowd, and Jim Higgins, Sinead O’Connor, Ciara O’Connor and Matthew Berril, and Galway Music Residency’s ensemble in residence, ConTempo Quartet.
Stoke Poges Memorial Gardens head gardener and cemeteries manager Franzi Cheeseman (left) with Michael Portillo Memorial gardens in Bucks are set to feature in a popular BBC TV series. Presenter Michael Portillo’s visit to Stoke Poges Memorial Gardens, dubbed “Buckinghamshire’s hidden gem”, will be screened next week. The production team of Great British Railway Journeys visited the gardens while filming the 12th series, which focuses on Britain between the World Wars and the 1930s. It is when the Stoke Poges land was acquired by Sir Noel Mobbs, opening as a Garden of Remembrance. In the programme, Mr Portillo helps plant a yew tree in a newly designed part of the gardens – a reference to Thomas Gray’s poem ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’, which was inspired by St Giles’ churchyard – which sits next door to the gardens.
1) Great British Railway Journeys: From Uxbridge To Hillingdon (2021)
Having exhausted every other train journey in the world, Michael Portillo travels from the first stop on the Metropolitan Line of London s famous underground system for several hundred yards to the second.
Along the way, Michael meets rail maintenance worker Ted Boreham, who informs him that platforms can sometimes get a little crowded at peak times. Michael expresses astonishment when regular rail-user Daphne Dullard shows him how she and her fellow commuters get through the barriers using their credit cards.
Finally, a local historian tells Michael how Uxbridge can trace its name back to an ancient bridge. Fascinating, enthuses Michael, who wears his familiar pastel-coloured slacks and blazer for what he excitedly describes as the trip of a lifetime!
Published:
7:00 PM February 3, 2021
The film crew prepare on the promenade at Lowestoft seafront ahead of filming the closing scenes for the new Burberry advert
- Credit: Screen Suffolk
With film and TV productions slower to return from the Covid-19 fallout than the smaller shoots for TV and online adverts, much of Suffolk’s work has been with advertisers.
But big brands have recognised what Suffolk has to offer.
Among the high profile visits were
Burberry shooting their latest advert on Lowestoft Beach, while Volkswagen came to Suffolk to shoot stills and, according to Screen Suffolk, loved it so much they stayed to shoot their video, yet to be released.