TV highlights for 2012

TV promises great things in 2012. These are some highlights that might be worth watching out for....

January - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? - ITV

Reality TV show about some charity workers working with starving Africans. Tensions rise as the crew struggle to get aid in on time, and run into conflict with the local politicians. But politics is a problem on the camp too, as Daryl and Victoria can't decide who should run things. Elsewhere, there's a sparkle of romance for Jenny and a local boy.

February - Panorama: Jurassic Pork - BBC1

Examining the link between developments in the swine flu (H1N1) virus and pigs in blankets leftover at Christmas.

March - Jeremy Clarkson's How About That? - BBC1

More tomfoolery from our favourite blokey bloke as he visits council estates to ask them what they spend their (more like our!) money on.

April onwards- Face Swap - Channel 4

Reality show in which couples see what it's like to have someone else's face surgically transplanted onto the one they love. The first episode sees Jill come home to find that husband Tony now looks like the local newsagent.

April - The Only Made in Swindon - E4

Following the success of the Essex and Chelsea shows, Swindon bands together to prove to the world that they too have dislikable people in their town.

May - Guess Who's Escaped Poverty? - ITV

Follow up documentary about one African family that journeyed across the Mediterranean to Italy, narrowly missing the border police, only to win the Euromillions jackpot on their first attempt. With dramatised re-enactments.

May onwards - Freeloader in an Off-Roader - BBC1

A spin-off of Top Gear's Star in a Reasonably Priced Car in which people on benefits tackle the newly opened Top Gear mud ring.

June - Dry Planet - BBC1

Attenborough does deserts.

July/August - Olympic Shames - BBC1

New cop show following police and security personnel as they rustle up unsavoury characters at London's Olympics. With terrorists, athlete druggies and the communities of East London, the takings are sure to be high.

August - Newsnight: The Riots, One Year On - BBC2

Theresa May and Diane Abbott argue about whether punitive measures were the right tactic to curtail the rise of the underclass, as the cuts began to bite and more riots threatened.

August onwards - BBC R1OT - New Channel

The BBC invents a special channel alongside the News channel for BBC R1OT, a temporary channel, presumably, as the country once again finds itself gripped by riot fever. Join Jon Sopel for 24 hour coverage on the front line in London, and other reporters dotted around the country in dozens of besieged cities.

September - Natural World - BBC2

With incredible new technology BBC camera-people are on location documenting the rapid spread of mould over an opened yoghurt. Micro-Cameratic Technology (MCT) shows in never-before-seen detail some of the most fundamental procedures of life.

September - Jeremy Clarkson's Mao About That? - BBC1

Clarkson gets special permission to drive to China and explore the pros and cons of a communist, capitalist state.

October - An Arm and a Clegg - Channel 4

Looking back at the first half of Nick Clegg's role as deputy Prime Minister, with leading analysts and commentators addressing the gulf between promises and policies.

October - Occupy This! - Channel 4

One year since tents were pitched outside Saint Paul's, Will Self takes a wry look at where all the camping and shouting has got us. With surveys suggesting that the country hates bankers but hates hippies even more, what chance has the newly established Occupy Party got in the next local elections?

October - Euro: A Tough Act to Follow - BBC4

With the drama finally over, and the countries on the continent resuming their former currencies, Paul Mason asks what's next for the once powerful economic force that is Europe.

November - Maya 2012 - Sky1

Three-part drama series spinning-off from The Mummy franchise following Brendan Fraser as he's accosted by Mayans back from the dead with a stark warning for the fate of humanity. Guest stars Sam Neill.

December - What Will You Do Before We Die? - Channel 4

Audience interactive special presented by Jimmy Carr and Davina McCall charting the nations favourite dying wishes. From massive orgies to a ride in a BMW Q60, nothing is unreasonable when the end is nigh. Contribute online or phone in. 10% of proceeds go to charity.

December 20 - Countdown to Doomsday - BBC1

With David Dimbleby.

(Similar program showing on Sky with Adam Boulton and ITV with Alastair Stewart)

The Filter.

'Eight months of vineyards, swimming, and parties with hippies,' she says. I reply,

- What more could you want?

- Indeed. Well, actually I don't like wine too much. It's OK. I know a bad wine, but can't tell a good one. And hippies . . .

- Hippies.

- The hippie stereotype pales in comparison to the dudes I met.

- An inadequate stereotype?

- I'd say so. The stereotype provides the model, blind enthusiasm does the rest. And despite what they might say, it's not cool.

- Not cool.

- Not cool at all. Regular people wind me up, just think what an exaggerated stereotype does.

- Happy to be home then?

- I'm not home now, I'm away again.

- London's your adopted home.

- I suppose. Yes, happy to be home.

A chocolate sprinkle from her cappuccino, one grain of sawdust chocolate, has found its way to the corner of her mouth. She's looking down at the table, through the table, as if remembering something. Something table-related? I can't be sure. Something from those eight lost months spent with the hippies, swimming? I will never know. Our time apart had not been a time apart, as such. We are not people who could maintain the notion of a distance between us, because we were never together. There is no us. We were an I and a she (from my perspective), in bubbles. In the same city, same room, or merely same language, we had always been apart, unremarkably apart. Our new-found togetherness is strange, as if we are starting again from where things left off, even though nothing ever existed to leave off from. Why were we here? Probably because I asked if she wanted a coffee. People do that in London, right? Meet people who are tragically no more than acquaintances? It's just a sequence of coffees with acquaintances, nothing more. That's what we're doing. It's so banal and yet so breathtakingly significant.

And I say,

- I suppose God gave us a filter so that people don't say things like this but, you were my favourite.

The guy reading The Guardian twitches. He must be crying with laughter inside. Pity me, friend, or jump in and save me. I'm doing that thing that we always regret not doing - seizing, leaping, falling. And why do we not do it? Because it's awful. It feels awful; it sounds awful. No collection of words can get around the glaring ridiculousness of this very moment. No sequence of words can arise like a magical formula to make it better. It's like choosing between a handgun, shotgun or cannon: if you're standing in the wrong place, you're going down.

She peers though the table some more. Lips parted. A tiny smile . . . is this a smile? Perhaps. But her cheeks have something of a smile-adorning quality; she is always somewhat smiling.

- Do you believe in God?

Her eye on mine now. not staring. A soft eye. Not darting between left eye and right eye like people do when they're incredibly intrigued by what you're saying. Just her eyes, doing their thing. If her gaze were a car, it would be going at about twenty.

- No (I say this without much of the conviction I'd hoped to express.)

- So where does the filter come from?

- I don't know. Where does life come from?

- Don't get too profound on me now, explain the filter.

- My filter's evidently faulty.

- That doesn't bode well for the credibility of the things you say.

- Thanks.

- Who knows what might come out. (She tilts her head slightly.)

- I realise the danger.

- Maybe that's enough to disprove God.

- People ignoring the filter?

- People sensing the filter and then blasting straight though it.

- You're not going to let me get away with this are you.

- But God gave you free will, huh?

- Worst mistake he ever made.

- So is it you or God that filters your words?

- What do you think?

- It's not God.

- I think, therefore there is a God?

- That's a circle.

- I say the wrong things, therefore i am?

- That's stupid.

- Lacan?

- That's a God complex.

- Society?

- No such thing.

- Socially acceptable labour time?

- Completely irrelevant.

- Historical materialism?

- You can take your syllables some place else.

- My syllables will be my undoing.

She paused, then said,

- Once when I escaped the hippies and walked out to the vineyard near my cousin's, I managed to convince myself that I was in Italy. Have you been to Italy? Me neither. But I'm sure it was just like Italy. Rows of grapes, all parallel snaking across the hills, paths occasionally splitting them up. The sun was setting and I sat there long enough for the shadow, cast by a wooden trailer, to run from the path I had come from, past the tree where I was sat, narrowly missing my legs, to the barn where my Aunt was making dinner. Pizza of course.

- Of course.

- I became totally convinced that it was Italy: the Mafia were circling the town demanding protection money; Salvatore the fugitive is hiding in the hills, waiting for revenge; the young boys were trying to enlist in the army (it's the olden days and there's a war on). And my sister, who is older and luckier than I am, is fretting because she hasn't heard from Alfonso -

- Alfonso?

- Alfonso - in over a week. He's only twenty, the same as my sister. He rushed off with his machine gun with such excitement. At the end of the first week she received seven letters, all at once. He had written every day, but the post was only delivering once a week around these parts, where only the wine and Mafia operated. The second week she received five letters. Apparently Alfonso was in the trenches, in the cold mountainous regions at the French border. After a month the postman came with nothing but rations for the family, and my sister is heartbroken. She's been crying into his clothes for three days. She's stopped eating pizza. But spring has come to Italy and it's one of those curiously over-hot spring days that reminds you how drastically the heights of the seasons differ, and I'm sitting watching the trailer's shadow, waiting for pizza, thinking of my sister and the whereabouts of her quiet boyfriend. I wonder if someday I will have a boyfriend who I can cry over, who can nearly destroy me with his lack of presence, or uncertainty of life. Whether he will break my heart by finding something special in another girl which for some reason isn't in me, and I can commit myself to finding out what that thing is, mimicking it and winning him back. Because, for me, Italy is beautiful and empty. The shadow would sweep along the track, narrowly missing my leg, and depart as the day cooled.

The small grain of chocolate is still at the corner of her mouth. I almost use this moment to draw her attention to it, but refrain from doing so.

Some people are advocates of the working filter. Some people are not. Some encourage a rupture and then are appalled at the result. Some mirror it with a simultaneous breakdown in their own filter mechanism. Some laugh. Some change the subject. Some embrace the subject. Some are lost for words. Some forget that words need not mean anything. Some forget that words can mean something. Some talk of wine, war, and pizza, and dedicate their afternoon to keeping you wondering. I suppose that's why God gave us cappuccinos.

NUC: Daylesford Farm Shop, Pimlico

London is gripped by a heatwave (Uh, this entry dates back a few months...). The Crofton Park to Blackfriars line is experiencing signalling failures. Chris and I arrived in Central too late for the dérive we had planned. (Somewhat ironic - Situationist tactics thwarted by an over-reliance on public transport.) We end up in Victoria, in this café/farmshop. It's in the somewhat Parisian square here in Pimlico, where T-shirted Londoners happily bump into their neighbours in the street. It's like WestEnders, the antithesis to the East: the sun shines, everyone's smiling, peering into local independent furniture shops with their loved ones, or sipping ginger beer in a farmshop.

They sell organic food and drink. We have ginger beers - extra potent. The sandwiches look great. £1.75 a ginger beer, £3.50 a sandwich - not unusually expensive, too much for me though. The shop is bright and spacious, with organic aromas grappling with baked bread for nose-attention. This is a place for attractive people, and Chris and I wonder how soon til we're chucked out. We keep our heads down and discuss trivial things. No music accompanies us, out front of the café, but a rich soundtrack of cutlery and nearby traffic. Daylesford negotiates the country into the city with some skill.

(No Title)

it was on a hungover sunday stroll when i realised that i had stopped thinking. i noticed the effort that was needed to project something into my head, to feign interest in it and develop it into something that could keep my attention. inevitably, everything slipped away. too much concentration was required.

this was back when i was at university. the requirement for thought had become sickly, now associated with the gradual alienation of myself from my peers. a memory dipped in a bitter ointment. i seemed to lack the will to go there, to engages whatever bits of brain that made me compute things. perhaps the incessant questioning of just about everything that i was once so intrigued by, so energised by, had taken its toll. perhaps i was unwilling to think, to value, judge or enjoy, because to consider it only slightly more would involve it fragmenting into some kind of paradox, and well i just don't have the time for that.

looking back now, i recall the need to juice myself up on coffee before engaging with my brain for some purpose, say, like reading, or writing an essay, or applying for a job, even responding to an email from a bygone friend. some kind of preparatory act was required, and this ended up being coffee. coffee signalled positive engagement with the task at hand. like clearing the house before a party, knowing the mess that the party would bring. but i couldn't be bothered to party any more, the clean-up beforehand wasn't worth the trouble.

the coffee became tasteless and unaffordable. it was left to me to do things, to find some criteria with which to value things, and to subsequently decide to do them. from whence this curse of inertia? i asked the small collection of ducks below me. why this relentless indifference? any clues? i tried to trick myself with emotional triggers, something to jump-start some form of emotion. a past romance; a late grandmother; rising energy prices; world poverty... what am i to make of these things?

and rounding the corner of a frosted park walkway, that hungover sunday, i caught myself with nothing fuzzing around in this mind of mine. no daydreaming about years past, no musings on the weekend ahead, no opinions on the books i was reading. just space. space doomed to be gradually comsumed with a fairly indifferent reflection on this very predicament. to a passing dog-walker i may look deep in thought, unreachable, lost in my own problems, dwelling on deep feelings, longing, wishing, hurting... not i. this preoccupied face holds no secrets.