Beyond the Roundels

Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show: Hotel Babylon

It's definitely not a great TV show, but I got hooked on S3. After all, nothing ever goes really badly wrong, celebrities visit each week and send themselves up, and it had Emma Pierson as Anna, the receptionist desperate to have a piece of the wealth for herself. I was a bit disappointed with last year's run, and I never saw S1 or 2, so maybe I just chanced on it at the right moment to enjoy a bit of well-done light relief. (So many pretty people capable of doing proper comedy pratfalls is, I feel, worthy of note in itself...). But if it does reappear, I'll have to give it a look, if only for Alexandra Moen as the slightly loopy press officer, Emily.

Sometimes you need a bit of escapism, and this one at least seems not to take itself too seriously!


( Full list of days )

As of last year, I managed to be in on the right night, instead of out, and discovered Hotel Babylon. It's like the anti-Spooks or something, a lot of froth and nonsense that doesn't take itself seriously and so manages to get away with it, plus a bit of moral backbone (usually supplied by Dexter Fletcher's Tony) leavens it out. So, yes, I'm frivolous and shallow and I like it.

( Cut for spoilers )