The end game

HARD luck if you don’t like Britain’s Got Talent and Coronation Street and your remote control batteries are dead and the channel is stuck on ITV1, because those two shows are dominating the peaktime schedules all week.

Some might say we’ve already seen the winner of Britain’s Got Talent on Monday, when 12-year-old singer Ronan Parke performed. He had the audience on its feet and viewers voting him into first place in the first of the week’s semifinals.

If anyone’s going to beat him it will be another youngster, 11-year-old James Hobley – a dancer destined to be dubbed the real Billy Elliot. His dancing was pretty amazing in the auditions and I wouldn’t be surprised if he and Ronan squared up in the final.

In the Street, a hat-trick of storylines is ready to burst. Becky’s meltdown won’t be helped by Kylie revealing how she “sold” her son, Max, to Becky and Steve. John Stape goes into hiding, which is advisable as the truth about his killings and identify fraud becomes public.

And Graeme is trying to deny he fancies his wife Xin, the woman he married in a fake wedding to enable her to stay in this country.

What is certain is that nothing will be resolved tonight, as there are two more episodes this week. Everyone needs to suffer a bit more before matters are settled.

WISTERIA Lane looks positively peaceful compared to Coronation Street at the moment.

In Desperate Housewives, Susan’s feeling pretty good after her kidney transplant.

But is gambling her and husband Mike’s remaining savings really a good idea?

Elsewhere, despite Bree’s protestations, Andrew decides now is the time to tell Carlos he accidentally killed his mother years ago and Renee introduces Lynette to the world of high-class shopping.

IT’S more than a decade since the end of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and film-maker Alison Millar is keen to find out exactly how well the battle scars have healed. So she’s headed to the stage where much of it took place, Shankill Road, for the Wonderland documentary The Men Who Won’t Stop Marching.

She joins the men of the marching bands for four months, in particular spending time with Jordan, an 11-yearold aspiring drummer from one of the former parliamentary parties.

What she discovers is a picture that’s far from clear cut. With mixed feelings of entrenched prejudice, yet relief that the overt hostilities are over, it’s easy to see that although many refuse to reflect openly on the past, it’s far from forgotten.

During filming, Jordan makes a shocking discovery at the end of his road, which encourages his father to break his silence and take his son on a journey into his own past.

TO many around the world, Sergio Vieira de Mello was a man worth his weight in gold. The former head of the UN mission to Baghdad had been in the diplomatic business for more than 35 years, garnering praise for his efforts in humanitarian programmes, and becoming a likely candidate for UN Secretary-General.

Charming, charismatic and diplomatic like nobody before him, he was a man who would visit the most dangerous places and even talk around the most hardened and terrifying war criminals.

Sergio’s life was cut short when he was killed – alongside 20 other members of his staff – in the Canal Hotel bombing in Iraq in 2003.

But his legacy lives on, and he’s since been rewarded with a number of posthumous awards and honours.

The Storyville documentary Fight to Save the World: Sergio has colleagues and loved ones recount events leading to his death, while the film tracks the efforts to rescue him from the debris.