The Friday Irregular

To subscribe or unsubscribe, or to discuss how to contribute articles or ideas, mail TFIr@gizmo1.demon.co.uk.

Friday 10 March

18:00	BBC2	The Simpsons. Treehouse of Horror IV (R) followed by Itchy and Scratchy Land (R)
21:00	Ch.4	Friends. The One With All the Rugby (R) Ross tries to impress Emily
21:30	Ch.4	South Park. Chicken Lover (R). Barbrady and his deputies (Stan, Kyle and Cartman) trail a criminal.
22:00	Ch.4	Frasier. Back Talk. Under medication Frasier reveals a secret.
22:30	Ch.4	So Graham Norton. Comedy chatshow.

Saturday 11 March

00:00	ITV	Passenger 57 (1993) Aircraft hijack thriller with Wesley Snipes, Bruce Payne and Liz Hurley.	****
00:55	BBC2	New York Stories (1989) Trilogy of short tales set in NYC. Scorsese's opener about an artist (Nick Nolte) and his assistant (Rosanna Arquette) is good, Coppola's adaptation of "Eloise" is indulgent and dull, but the last segment is well worth waiting for - Woody Allen's comic tale of a man whose mother appears in the sky to nag him everywhere he goes.	***
14:45	BBC2	Blake's 7. Time Squad (R). The rebels find an object drifting in space.
19:00	Ch.4	Station X. The War of the Machines (R). Ending the story of the Bletchley Park codebreakers .
22:45	BBC2	Scene By Scene. James Coburn. Interview with the actor.
23:35	BBC2	The President's Analyst (1967) Spy spoof starring James Coburn.	**

Sunday 12 March

00:15	BBC1	The X Files. SR-819 (R, from Weds). Skinner has 24 hours to live.
14:20	BBC1	Return to Oz (1985). Effective sequel to the fantasy classic, starring Fairuza Balk and Piper Laurie	***
17:05	Ch.5	Flash Gordon (1980). Lavish Queen-scored update of the old comic strip/serial sci-fi, with Sam J Jones, Melody Anderson, Topol and Max von Sydow.	****
18:00	Ch.4	Time Team. Roman archaeology against the clock in Greenwich
21:00	BBC1	The Wyvern Mystery. Concluding part of the Sheridan Le Fanu horror
22:00	Ch.4	To Die For (1995). Black comedy starring Nicole Kidman	**

Monday 13 March

00:35	Ch.5	NHL Ice Hockey. Colorado v Philadelphia followed by highlights of Dallas v Vancouver
00:55	Ch.4	Babylon 5. Messages From Earth (R) followed by Passing Through Gethsemane (R).
01:05	BBC2	The Outer Limits. First Anniversary. Norman Glass believes he has the perfect marriage until he makes a frightening discovery. (R?)
18:00	BBC2	The Simpsons. Bart's Inner Child (R) Bart and Lisa attend a self-improvement seminar.
18:00	Ch.4	Friends. The One With Phoebe's Ex-Partner (R). Phoebe's old singing partner sells out, and Chandler dates an old girfriend of Joey's.
20:00	Ch.4	To the Ends of the Earth. The Meteorite That Vanished. Did a giant meteorite fall in Mauritania at the start of the 20th century?
21:00	BBC2	Journeys to the Bottom of the Sea. The Mystery of the M1. What caused the most advanced submarine in the British Navy to sink in 1925?
22:00	Ch.4	The Crucible (1996). Cinematic adaptation of Henry Miller's Salem witchcraft trials play, with Daniel Day Lewis and Winona Ryder.	****
22:30	ITV	Savage Planet. Star Wounds. Just what are the chances of the viewing public being hit by another programme about the risk of meteors hitting Earth? ;)
23:35	BBC1	Soapdish (1991) Farce set in the world of American daytime soap operas, with Sally Field, Kevin Kline, Elisabeth Shue and Carrie Fisher	****

Tuesday 14 March

21:00	Ch.5	The Lawnmower Man (1992) Sci-fi thriller about a scientist who uses VR to boost the mental capacity of a gardener, with Pierce Brosnan, jeff Fahey and Jenny Wright	****

Wednesday 15 March

18:45	BBC2	Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In the Pale Moonlight. Sisko tries to bring the Romulans into the war against the Dominion.
21:30	BBC1	Waterworld (1995). Kevin Costner's aquatic turkey. (Viewing hint: skip the middle 60 minutes)	*
22:15	Ch.5	Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995). Curse of too many sequels more like...	*
23:50	Ch.5	NHL Ice Hockey. Dallas v New Jersey followed by highlights of Philadelphia v Colorado

Thursday 16 March

00:30	BBC1	The People Under the Stairs (1992) Grisly horror from Wes Craven, with Ving Rhames, Brandon Adams and Twin Peaks' Everett McGill and Wendy Robie..	**
15:30	Ch.5	The Doomsday Flight (1966). A terrorist blackmails an airline after planting an altitude-sensitive bomb on one of their planes. Scripted by Rod "Twilight Zone" Serling, starring Jack Lord, Richard Carlson and Ed Asner..	***
18:00	BBC2	Star Trek: The Next Generation. Genesis (R) Picard and Data find the Enterprise drifting in space, her crew de-evolved.
18:00	Ch.4	Friends. The One Where Ross and Rachel Take a Break (R). Phoebe dates a diplomat
21:30	BBC2	Horizon. Planet Hunters. The astronomers searching for planets beyond the Solar System.

Friday 17 March

00:10	Ch.4	Ally McBeal. Happy Trails (R). Judge Boyle dies.
18:00	BBC2	The Simpsons. Scoutz N the Hood (R) followed by Sideshow Bob Roberts (R)
21:00	Ch.4	Friends. The One With the Fake Party (R). Rachel fakes a party for Emily.
21:30	Ch.4	South Park. Conjoined Fetus (R). While the kids head to China for the dodgeball world championships while the townsfolk celebrate Conjoined Fetus Day in town.
22:00	Ch.4	Frasier. The Fights Before Christmas. Frasier's party doesn't go well.
22:30	Ch.4	So Graham Norton. Comedy chat show

Another mixed bag of quotations this week. Answers next week or from the usual address.

A few years back a video was produced of a journey around the M25 - the motorway around London famous for congestion and confusion. Now another road is the subjest of a paean in the form of a 214-page book titled "Ode to a Road". Dutchman Pieter Boogaart spent ten years researching the book about the 90-mile-long A272 which runs through the counties of Hampshire and Sussex. "Of course, I'm a little bit mad. But I'm definitely mad in a nice way," Boogaart was quoted as saying.

With shades of Lysistrata, prostitutes in Soho staged a one-day strike last Wednesday to mark International Women's Day and protest at the local council's attempts to bully their landlords into evicting them.

You might remember a little televisual fuss back in January over the start of Y2K, with 24-hour broadcasts of the first and last sunrise of the new year. Last Wednesday the world's most northerly permanent settlement saw its first sunrise of the year. The aptly named Longyearbyen, 625 miles from the North Pole celebrated its annual "sun rise day" as the sun briefly rose around midday - the first time the 1400 inhabitants of the town had seen it since October.

A Bogota woman who tried to smuggle a gun into a prison by hiding it up her rectum found herself unable to extract it, leaving her in need of emergency surgery last week.

This week's truly dumb criminals are the two would-be safe crackers from Pisa, Italy, who - finding themselves unable to open the 5500lb safe in situ at 3am, put a chain round it and started dragging it home with their car. The shower of sparks and scream of metal-on-tarmac could be heard by people as far as half-a-mile away, including the district police station who sent a patrol to investigate.

Tuesday marks the anniversary of the 1836 birth of Mrs (Isabella) Beeton, author of the classic household management and recipe book. To celebrate, we bring you one of the oddest recipe sites we've seen... it's Cooking With 7-Up!

Madame Jennifer, our in-house psychic predicts the following numbers will be lucky:

Saturday 11 March	-	Douglas Adams born, 1952
Sunday 12 March	-	Thomas Arne, composer ("Rule Britannia" et al) born in London, 1710
Monday 13 March	-	DEC introduced the PDP-11 minicomputer, 1970
Tuesday 14 March	-	Albert Einstein born, 1879
Wednesday 15 March	-	Beware the Ides of March! Caesar assassinated, 44BC
Thursday 16 March	-	Andrew S Hallidie, inventor of the cable car, born, 1836
Friday 17 March	-	Nat King Cole, crooner, born, 1919. Happy St. Patrick's Day!