Tuesday 3rd November
THE GREAT POTTERY THROW DOWN, BBC2, 9pm
Forget the BBC’s annual search for a star baker or for Lord Sugar’s apprentice; we’re now looking for a really good potter.
“Pottery is almost as good as sex!” insists Kate Malone, a ceramics expert who’ll be judging the contest, while Keith Brymer Jones, her fellow judge, is a famous potter who includes Madonna and Brad Pitt among his clients. Mentions of sex and celebrity within the first few minutes, plus some innuendo when the clay is being slapped and shaped, gives this show a cheeky flavour but it remains little more than a crockery-based version of The Bake Off.
Parallels with that show are obvious: it’s a contest to find Britain’s next brilliant “home potter”; we have 10 amateurs dressed in aprons competing for the glory; instead of presenting pastries and cakes to the judges they’ll serve up trays of cups and bowls, and each week one potter is named as the winner of that round. Sara Cox is in place of Mel and Sue.
The potters’ first task is to create five stackable kitchen bowls which also have to be decorated. Then they’re tested on an old potting technique known as “pulling” which is used to pull and stretch the clay when shaping the handles of cups. “They’ll judge them without knowing whose handles they’re looking at!” says Cox with sporting enthusiasm and in the final round they must make as many egg cups as they can within 20 minutes.
This would be quite jolly and intriguing if they hadn’t clung so desperately to the Bake Off format
BBC SCOTLAND INVESTIGATES: GLASGOW BIN LORRY DISASTER
BBC1, 7pm
JACKIE BIRD speaks to the relatives of those who lost their lives in Queen Street’s bin lorry crash in Glasgow in December last year.
Six people were killed and many still feel justice has not been served. She also probes the driver’s employment history, asking why he was deemed suitable to drive a 26-ton vehicle.
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