Monica Galetti and Rob Rinder travelled to the Wilderness Hotel Inari, where prices start at £2000 a week, including full board and several outdoor activities. It takes a hardy sort to be on the staff out here, as Galetti and Rinder soon discovered. One guide used to work in a cosy office in the city. When she left the job her colleagues told her she would most likely die in the cold. Something different to put on the leaving card, I suppose.
The attractions of the place were obvious, starting with that vast wilderness on the hotel doorstep. I could see the appeal of the saunas and the ski bikes and the excellent odds on seeing the Northern Lights, but still, that temperature. I had to pause the programme at one point to don an extra bobble hat.
Rinder is a much better wingman for Galetti than her previous oppo, Giles Coren, who acted like he was doing punters the most enormous favour by serving them. Rinder is a chummier, more have a go sort, even if he doesn’t always use a coaster, the cad.
By the end of their stay, Rinder thought he understood why surveys found the Finns were the happiest people in the world. Even Mon, sceptical at first, was warming to the idea of a Lappish holiday. To celebrate she cooked a reindeer stew for fellow staffers. You might want to have the kids in bed by that point to avoid awkward questions.
Mulder and Scully, Daphne and Niles, Ross and Rachel, Nessa and Smithy, Sooty and Soo, Sweep and Soo … television loves a will-they-won’t-they relationship.
In Strike: The Ink Black Heart (BBC One, Monday) viewers were reunited with detective duo Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott for a sixth series of sleuthing and flirting.
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The last series ended with the pair enjoying a romantic evening that ended with an almost kiss from which he pulled back. In the new series it was Robin’s turn to be discombobulated. It was a clear case of unreliable narrators at work, and where would the will-they-won’t-they set up be without those?
On to gumshoe business and Robin’s services were sought by the creator of a hit cartoon, The Ink Black Heart. Edie Ledwell (Scots actor Mirren Mack) was being stalked and wanted to identify the troll pronto. But Robin refused the case because the agency was far too successful and busy. If you think that’s improbable, stick around.
Robin and Strike (Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger) eventually get to work, but what a tedious yarn it turns out to be. We descend into the world of cartoons and video games and moderators who hide their true identities – on and on it goes in a not terribly interesting way. Strike and Robin’s tactics are baffling, including taking an age to interview someone who should have been a main suspect.
The trouble with this series of Strike, and it was apparent in the last outing too, is that the will-they-won’t-they business is taking over. It is by far the most interesting show in town, largely because the pair are so good at it. Their bumbling around with love is believable because they are such strong, no-nonsense characters otherwise.
Joining them in the plus column is Ruth Sheen’s gloriously deadpan office manager Pat, a character coming into her own. Burke and Grainger remain a delight as well, and the whole Soho vibe still does the business.
When we eventually get to it, the Strike/Robin stuff does not disappoint. But up till then it felt like time was being filled.
George Michael, lead singer of the pop group Wham!, with the group’s guitarist Andrew Ridgeley (Image: Getty Images) Wham! Last Christmas Unwrapped (BBC2, Saturday) revisited the cult 1984 video to mark its 40th anniversary. It had been a very good year for Wham, and George Michael was determined to end it on a high with a Christmas number one. The melody came to him one Sunday afternoon while watching telly, and he had the song down in hours.
Off they went to Saas-Fee in Switzerland with a group of real-life pals, and the rest is pop history. Justine Kershaw’s film could have been just a puff piece but was so much more, including a look at what made the song so catchy and enduring, plus the inside story of the video’s making. Some bright spark hit on the idea of using real booze for the dinner party scene, leaving Andrew pie-eyed before the main course was over. Then there was the mystery of the missing diamante brooch ….
There was of course one empty seat at the table, but that certain someone was remembered with a lot of laughter, love and tears. “He was essentially my other half,” said Ridgeley. “I never conceived of a future without him.”
GM didn’t get his Christmas number one that year: a little thing called Band Aid happened. Besides singing on that, GM donated the royalties of Last Christmas to the charity. Some man.