The title of this video is called "WORST Mary Tyler Moore Episode? Let's Facepalm Together!", and I am not stupid, I know what clickbait is, but I still find it infuriating that an interesting topic is put out there in the most irritating, childish way possible.

Don’t fancy 2025’s telly today? Need to hide from family for an hour or two? Enjoy Christmas 1975 instead! 🎅🏻🎄 Open the PDF, click on a programme title and start streaming from various platforms. visualmutterings.com/1975-christm...

Working on something fun for New Year's Day.

Just read that Keeping Up Appearances is “dated”, and can you BELIEVE that it portrays certain social mores from the 90s that you wouldn’t do now, I’m absolutely stunned.

I had a pleasant interaction with RS at the time of broadcast where he confirmed my guess that they'd shown the cast Nigel Kneale's Baby as a guide to the acting.

Jim Kerr doing the club singer version. #totp

The Devil of Christmas seems to have become an annual watch for me now. Absolutely love it to bits.

Watching Conan the Barbarian. Nice to hear Basil Poledouris doing his score again.

Evening repost for this!

Just started Rhoda Season 5, and can Benny just fuck off now, please? Give Brenda her self-respect back.

Rhoda, "Jack's Back" (CBS TX: 9th April 1978) Julie Kavner is SO funny in this scene. Her years as Marge Simpson mean her skill as a physical comedian were wasted!

Rhoda, "Five for the Road": Sorry, in what possible way did this need to be a two-parter? I actually feel like grabbing the two episodes myself and editing them down to one, just to prove a point.

Genuinely perturbed that I am just not in any way interested in any of the half hour sitcoms the BBC has made this Christmas. Stuff like Two Doors Down, Amandaland, Here We Go, etc just leaves me absolutely stone cold.

The best of my writing in 2025. Ben Elton on The Oxford Road Show, tracing the history of an old joke in Porridge, how the Daily Mirror slagging off Love Thy Neighbour ended up in the show itself, and Fawlty Towers recording schedules. What more could you ask for? www.dirtyfeed.org/2025/12/dirt...

The George Harrison doc never happened in the end, it was suggested they would change some bits because of his family's wishes, but it was never finished

The best of my writing in 2025. Ben Elton on The Oxford Road Show, tracing the history of an old joke in Porridge, how the Daily Mirror slagging off Love Thy Neighbour ended up in the show itself, and Fawlty Towers recording schedules. What more could you ask for? www.dirtyfeed.org/2025/12/dirt...

Christmas Day Gladiators was the worst edition so far. Some factors were out of its control - there’s a reason Legend was missing - and some not. That ladder fiasco genuinely hurt the point of the show, and the fact that it was a celeb edition doesn’t absolve it entirely.

Just watched Celeb Gladiators, and maybe I’d stand a chance of winning if they’re going to provide ladders. Perhaps they should also chain me to the platform for Duel?

Rhoda, “Brenda and the Bank Girl”: A better episode than many recently - for a start, it’s actually about something - but it does crystallise one issue I have with the show right now.

OBLIGATORY PICTURE

I still can't stop watching this advert for The Very Best of Chris de Burgh

Rhoda, “As Time Goes By” is a perfect distillation of the show’s problems at this point. Rhoda and Jack get locked in a toilet and get drunk. Mildly amusing. But there’s no problem this causes or solves; no actual story, just a situation. The show would NEVER have got that wrong in previous years.

Watching the best Christmas sitcom special - Yes, Minister: Party Games - and I've only just noticed this subtle gag in the papers on Hacker's desk.

Halfway through Rhoda's fourth season, and I feel it's coming off the rails a bit. Not every episode, and there's still great stuff. But there's cracks. Something like "Rhoda Cheats" - what the hell was Johnny Venture doing there? What did he add? From a fun character, to background noise.

I thought this was very lovely into Animal Park on BBC One this morning. www.tvhome.co.uk/bbc-one/2025...

Just watched the first episode of (The) Marriage Lines, and Prunella is so good at playing upset that the whole endeavour felt vaguely depressing, despite how good it clearly is. I presume this isn’t the show’s standard mode!

As I’ve got older, I’ve learnt to relax and make peace with people who get silly things wrong. It doesn’t matter, we’re all human. Obviously, this excludes people who call idents “indents”.

Yuletide felicitations! The 1975 Christmas 'Radio TV Times' magazine is now available! 🎁 Explore 10 days of December 1975’s TV listings across both BBC and ITV. Open the PDF, click on a programme title and start streaming from various platforms. 🤶 visualmutterings.com/1975-christm...

In a world where TV seems to do less and less of what I want, the revelation of the arena in the first shot of the Gladiators reboot, and the visceral thrill of “Wait, they haven’t screwed it up”, has stayed with me for two years now.

Cool It Carol! (1970) really is a masterpiece in controlling tone. So many to screw it up, all resolutely avoided.

How to Survive The 70s and Maybe Even Bump Into Happiness (CBS TX: 22nd February 1978): A brilliant programme. Think: How to Irritate People, but hosted by Mary Tyler Moore, and with more singing and dancing.

Great to see Knightmare back again

Mary's Incredible Dream (CBS TX: 22nd January 1976): Mary Tyler Moore in a mix of Busby Berkeley musical, Dennis Potter dream sequence, and a high-budget version of an experimental 70s BBC2 CSO drama. If it's a folly, it's a highly entertaining one.

I think the thing I love most about Rhoda is the subtle way it tells the story.

I don’t make a habit of going through Friends and slagging off every piece of questionable material, because it’s a fairly pointless exercise. But it’s worth pointing out Rhoda did the old-home-movies-with-plump-characters in a far kinder and more affectionate way than Fat Monica, years earlier.

Oh TFL, may I suggest that if you want people to catch the Chesham train at Harrow-on-the-Hill, you don’t put the train on the wrong destination board, on the wrong platform, a flight of stairs away?

I love The Last Day, but “Kryten’s going to shut down automatically / no wait, that’s not actually the problem at all” plot twist always feels a little odd. If they’d had time for one more draft - the episode had a rushed writing process - maybe they would have smoothed it over a little.

God save us from sarcastic old people being vaguely unpleasant to staff in Wenzels.

I do enjoy the people who read Fesshole to refuse to believe that anybody has ever has casual, spontaneous sex with someone they met five minutes ago.

It’s competition time! (No prize.) Who can come up with the very earliest instance of John Cleese telling his Fawlty Towers/Icelandic Broadcasting Corporation anecdote about The Builders? Is there anything from the 70s?

The second three episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Hour were a significant improvement on the first three (and I liked the first three). They should have made the Gene Kelly one the first episode.

I am currently picking apart an article about the 1978 Mary variety show, because the writer doesn't seem to know that the ep they're looking at a) Didn't air, and b) Wasn't a finished edit. So they're trying to figure out what the gag was in a missing caption. There's no gag! It's unfinished!

Cognitive dissonance: having a job where it's your responsibility to make sure content warnings for language transmit correctly, to watching a video on YouTube promoting a concert (not a performance, an actual advert) which just includes swearing with absolutely no warning whatsoever.

There are more gags in this than all the adverts made in the past thirty years put together

The Mary Tyler Moore Hour is a mixed bag - better than its reputation, but obviously has problems - but the Dick Van Dyke episode is great. And the two Dick Van Dyke Show sketches in particular are fantastic. www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWpJ...

You lot need Dick Van Dyke singing Let's Go Fly a Kite on his 100th birthday more than you know.

BBC Four are showing the 1994 Brittas Empire special “In The Beginning” tonight at 10pm, which I think is the first ever repeat the episode has had on a BBC channel.

There is no part of this that isn't both amazing and shocking. Full decision here: www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/r... (PDF, contains strong language)

Very good choice of Ab Fab to repeat on BBC One on Christmas Day: “Cold Turkey”. Probably the best Ab Fab Xmas special, learning from all the mistakes of “Gay”.

Tried to read an article on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but they kept mentioning neoliberalism and I fell asleep.