The last time I saw Steven Mackintosh he was getting shot through the giblets by Mad "I'm crazy!" Alice on Luther and the last time I cared about him was when he played Nigel in Adrian Mole. He's one of those people who just seems to appear in a lot of shite (hello Camelot!) and rarely rises above his surroundings. Inside Men changes all that as not only is this a really good drama, he's really good in it. He plays John, a manager in a cash counting house. John, if I may borrow the vernacular of Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, is a stuttering prick – good at his job, conscientious to a fault and so, so eager to please it's sickening. He's in his 40s and just about to adopt a kid with wife Kirsty (Nicola Walker) so maybe it's time for him to man up, take that promotion he's been offered, up sticks and move to the north-west for added responsibility and an extra £300 a year? Or, you know, mastermind a £170 million heist from his own workplace. Inside Men

Top 30 TV Shows of 2011

It's you, it's you – it's all for you. By which I mean me.

2011 has been an exciting time for TV. It was the year in which Showtime finally lost its damn mind with heavy-handed nause off Episodes, dreary period piece The Borgias and a season of Dexter so toxically poor it could strip paint. No Blowtime shows in this top 30 - they fell the fuck off. The awesomeness of Justified and Breaking Bad could not be measured and it took a pitch perfect debut season from Lame of Blownes to nudge these two out by the narrowest of margins. Top 30 TV Shows of 2011

Aerial Telly Awards 2011

Like you knew he would

"I never let a statue tell me how nice I am". Thus spake self-styled "funky diabetic" Phife Diggy Dawg from A Tribe Called Quest. The close to death renal ward stalwart is suggesting to the listener that he does not require the validation of awards to know that he's a more or less adequate rapper. All very laudable I'm sure but are awards ever really about the recipients? Only in the most superficial way. When you're talking about an annual event with the gravitas of the Aerial Telly Awards it's not about acknowledging or rewarding the efforts of "artists" working in "television". It's about defining TV for the next 12 months – shaping the television landscape to come. It's a devastating clinical assessment of where we are, what we've become and what we will become. Aerial Telly both builds and destroys. Because once he cuts your throat there is no coming back. Receive his endorsement, on the other hand, and joy and success are lifelong boon companions. No one plays with you because to play with you is to play with Aerial Telly and to play with Aerial Telly is to guarantee instant death, decimation and annihilation. So, TV slime, is it hitlist or shitlist you ended up on? Read on for the dealio. Aerial Telly Awards 2011

Frozen Planet

BBC One

Aerial Telly is not a witless contrarian. He is not Toby Dung. And yet he finds a tiny something missing from BBC's epic and universally lauded Frozen Planet, the David Attenborough fronted seven-parter that records life at the North and South Poles while they remain virgo intacta as the planet's last wildernesses before Homo rapiens violates them irreparably. Ah the icy wastelands – a nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to live there. Frozen Planet

American Horror Story

Fx

Ryan Murphy just lost his damn mind. The creator of Nip/Tuck and Glee has reason to believe that his shit stinks not of shit. It's rare enough to create one significant hit in TV, let alone follow it up with another in a completely different genre but he's already done that so why not try your hand at horror when everything you touch turns to TV gold? The premiere of American Horror Story, his modern Gothic ghost tale, is a 60 minute manifesto on why he shouldn't have done it. It is the work of a madman, a fruitcake and an ego out of control. Ryan Murphy lost his damn mind. American Horror Story

Up the police

Coming straight from the underground

Aerial Telly supports the police. He is authoritarian on law and order as he sees it as the only progressive position to take. If you believe in democracy you believe in the rule of law. Given that you're around 7 billion times more likely to be the victim of a serious crime than be falsely accused of one it makes sense even out of naked self-interest. Not that you'd know it watching the feeble-minded's reaction to post-mortem cartwheel queen Amanda Knox's bullshit acquittal recently along with her Harry Potturd aping borefriend Rapeyhell Sollecito. "She was railroaded by a hostile justice system – just like Sideshow Bob!" about sums up the level of thinking among certain people. Aerial Telly has a lot to say on that mess which he will get into another time but for now he would like to talk about the rogue cop and his place in TV. Up the police

The good pie young

Four shows that needed just a little more time

NBC announced last week what many had already suspected: they were cutting the throat of The Playboy Club, the misfiring tips-and-ass blowcial history period piece on the grounds of nobody giving a fuck about it and some really embarrassing attempts at moral outrage from the usual suspect Media Monitor teeds who you always assumed had died out with Ronald Reagan's presidency. Nobody who wasn't directly involved in its making will mourn The Playboy Club - although it wasn't as bad as some made out it struggled to engage you, could claim no real star quality among its cast and had some pretty haphazard this'll-do writing. Getting shitcanned after three episodes seems harsh but that is the nature of television. Often a cruel mistress, sometimes a total bitch, she offers favours unwillingly and dispenses beatdowns arbitrarily. Vindictive caprice comes as naturally to her as involuntary celibacy comes to Aerial Telly readers. Why, many fine shows have been cancelled way before anyone decent would have pulled their cards. Don't believe me? Check this. The good pie young

Channel 5 – saviours of boxing

Five the saviour, Tyson Fury as John the Baptist

It's been 14 years since The Spice Girls launched Channel 5, the network that would give us the kind of fake titty softcore like Red Shoe Diaries and endless Shannon Tweed mainstream erotica titles like Indecent Behavior IV that made Britain masturbate again in the brief interim between 28.8 K modems and 56K modems. Oh you young fools who don't recall a time before the Internet. How hopelessly crippled your imaginations must be. Any old fucking way never let it be said that Channel 5 shied away from showing unwatchable bilge . But Aerial Telly is all about giving credit where it's due and in giving terrestrial network debuts for shows like The Shield, Californication, Breaking Bad and 30 Rock it showed that, much like Dolly Parton, there was more to it than a pair of tits. And although this summer saw it revive the corrupt, broken and bankrupt teed leviathan Big Brother, Aerial Telly is going to give it a pass. Because in 2011 Channel 5 brought boxing back to the people. Channel 5 – saviours of boxing

What's with the Fall 2011 shows?

Or Autumn if you speak English properly

"September is the cruellest month" is exactly what TS Eliot would have said if TV were more of a thing back then. For it is in September that American TV gives birth to a litter of shows that burst out of its guts like baby spiders bursting out of a mother spider that has just been stamped on by some bastard schoolkid. "Fly, tiny ones" TV squawks "Fly like the wind!" as her barely formed spawn swoop, tailspin and crash onto the airwaves, exposed and humiliated, shocked by the unforgiving cold air. The Fall premieres offer a chance for TV critics to get a taste of what the next year of TV will look like and it's also a commencement of hostilities, an opening of the hunting season. Knives are sharpened, phasers set to snark - cruel nature, cruel cruel nature. What's with the Fall 2011 shows?

The Emmys 2011

Sky Whevs

Aerial Telly, motherfuckers – that's my name, don't wear it out. Yes, it's been awhile - shut the fuck up . Writing and pum-pum have been keeping Aerial Telly busy but it was Monday and he thought he could briefly comment on what a gwan. The Emmys did their "thing" last night and while pretty much all award ceremonies are ungovernable gobble junkets only a complete panty sniffer would argue that this wasn't a pretty damn bloody close to reasonable set of gongs.The Emmys 2011

Television Can Blow Me: Aerial Telly hits the shelves

Like you knew he would

Aerial Telly hasn't been around for a while and he realises this has been hard for you but your boy has been busy working with the revolution: the e-book revolution. That's right, you fruits. When e-book sales outstripped those of paperbacks for the first time in April it was clear we had passed the point of no return. JK Rowling's decision to self publish just served as confirmation. We were already through the looking glass. The e-book had arrived. Television Can Blow Me: Aerial Telly hits the shelves

David Haye lost in more ways than I can count

David Haye gags hard on the Ukrainian cock of justice and Aerial Telly proves once again he is undefeated undisputed KING of boxing betting

Punks jump up to get beat down

It's hardly "news" that Aerial Telly is the greatest boxing handicapper that ever placed a bet. In fact, it's about as much "news" as it is that he made your girl come so hard she knocked out street lamps several postcodes away and needed past-life regression therapy to get him out of her head. Similarly, it's hardly "news" that Aerial Telly is the greatest television writer that ever picked up a pen and that all the fish barrel shooting Twitter groupie slime masquerading as TV critics shart their pants and run squealing to their editurds for three-year sabbaticals whenever they hear his name. Nor, by any reasonable definition of the word, can it be called "news" that Aerial Telly handles himself with a hell of a lot of class under unbelievable pressure and that everyone in the "media" could learn a thing or two from him. So what is "news" you ask?

David Haye gags on the Ukrainian cock of justice

The Killing Series 2

BBC Four

Series 1 spoilers, you ignorant dipshits

It's been two years since Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl) figured out that it wasn't the schoolteacher, the janitor but rather ******** who did for Nanna Birk Larsen, her jug eared partner Meyer and, I suppose, that civil servant who got run over. Two years spent checking passports in Whøgivesåfuck - punishment for pulling a 9mm on a copper in her single-minded pursuit of looking a twat - and Sarah is ready for a new challenge. As luck would have it, a series of horrific murders take place and Lennart Brix (Morten Suurballe) knows that if you want a girl who draws down on her colleagues, gets her partner murdered and chases down more like blind alleys than a rat with its arse on fire you have to turn to Sarah "for fuck's sake, Lund!" Lund. The Killing is back and it's like it never went away.The Killing Series 2

Lights Out

Fx

Patrick "Lights" Leary, (Holt McCallany) former heavyweight champion of the world, has been punched in the tits an awful lot. The shockwaves from this cruel pectoral assault have reached his brain and given him pugilistic dementia. It's not so bad. He blacks out, forgets who he is and floods the kitchen every time he makes Coco Pops but Patrick can't grumble. It's been five years since Derek "Death Row" Reynolds (Billy Brown) took his title in a controversial decision but everything is gravy, right? He has Loving wife Teresa (Catherine McCormack), loving nausey kids Katie, Ava and Daniella, lovely house and he's set for life. OR IS HE? (Clue: no, he isn't).Lights Out

The Killing

BBC Four

Everything's just piggedy pissing marvellous for Deputy Superintendent Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl). Soon to swap the stressful life of coppering in busy vibrant Copenhagen for remote Sigtuna in her gimp shitsack Swedish borefriend Bengt's homeland she can hardly wait. It'll be a wonderful new start for Sarah and her nausey teenage skateboarding son Mark. Just get this last uneventful day of the job out of the way and she can enter her future Love Paradise with safe old reliable, no alarms and no surprises Bengt. But wait. Just as Lund is about to depart, 19-year-old hottie Nanna Birk Larsen is dragged out of the boot of the car submerged in a lake. She's been raped and murdered. What the figgedy hell is going on and just who is doing The Killing?The Killing

Archer

Fx

My god, I love Sterling Archer (H. Jon Benjamin). He's such a glorious arsehole. As the star field agent of the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS), he gets to indulge in his core pastimes of violence, womanising and drinking while saving his country. I know - best job ever. It's Bond taken to its absurd/logical conclusion but where we don't really get to delve deep into the character of James Bond one thing is obvious about Archer's behaviour: the mommy maketh the man. Archer

Friday Night Dinner

Channel 4

Twitter as a marketing tool has great power and with great power of course comes no responsibility whatsoever. You have great power, why would you give a fuck about responsibility? That's why whenever there is a Twitter buzz like the one for Robert Popper's sitcom Friday Night Dinner you should treat it with suspicion bordering on hostility. You can't move for groupies on Twitter. Some of them are journalists and they need to be fed feet first into a wood chipper Uday Hussein style. Eavesdropping on the famous, talented or just notorious is seductive. The dynamic debases everyone involved. Twitterati get drunk on power and start to believe that everything they say matters. Gitterati (everyone else) go to great lengths to keep the delusion going. It's an unholy tawdry mook fest and we're all to blame.Friday Night Dinner

Camelot

Starz

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that facial hair will appear on King Arthur (Jamie Campbell Bower) as his kingliness rises. Because as the blonde fruit stands with wafer thin credibility, shaved like Hollywood quim in Camelot's ruins, and King Lot (James Purefoy) calls him a "beardless bastard" Arthur swallows something hard and jagged. He knows Lot is right. He is but boy - more suited to an episode of Skins than your sword and sorcery. His claim to the throne is as illegitimate as his birth (and that's a lot because his birth father Uther Pendragon was totally not married to Queen Igraine when he put his cock in her). Truth be told, Arturd has no idea what he's doing here. He was a country bumpkin just days before so what gives? As is often the case in these scenarios, somebody had a vision.Camelot

This is England ‘86

Channel 4

Three years after Shane Meadows convinced the world 1980s England consisted of friendly skinheads roaming the subways adopting waifs and strays and schools filled with children dressed like Boy George, his crew of East Midlands halfwits are back for more revisionist cultural history. Living hell on earth, in other words. This is England ‘86

10 TV title sequences that make you be like "damn"

Especially for you

OK you piss swilling toad stompers, Aerial Telly is aware that you like your "lists" of "things" and while he has longtime made a point to ignore everything you say, do and care about he has nonetheless graciously compiled a top 10 of memorable title sequences. Some will be visually impressive, some will successfully distil the essence of the show into 30 seconds, some will just be laffs. But rest assured that these are the definitive top 10 and that anyone who disagrees with this is a sick piece of shit with no more right to call himself a human being than Shane Meadows has to call himself a reliable chronicler of the English working class. Hit it. 10 TV title sequences

Justified

Fx

Partly because he's killed more men than typhoid but also because gunplay is never personal for him, being shot by Marshall Raylan Givens (Deadwood's Timothy Olyphant) is not something you can take to heart. The defining irony of Fx's Justified is that while it's the most trigger-happy show on TV, it's also the most genteel. Motherfuckers be all polite when they come to take your life.Justified

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