UR TV CAST

The chuckle from the officers that accompanies this remark suggests they all know Othello isn’t one of them, but they need him badly and – right now – they don’t intend to dwell on it.Harewood’s charismatic Othello has charm, poise and superficial confidence. Instead, his career as a classical scholar provides the focus for some reassuringly complex theatrics. (Indeed, Michael Bryant pops up as Charon, the river Styx’s resident ferryman.) John Wood (above left) plays the octogenarian Housman, Paul Rhys (above right) his younger self, as he fails his exams, gets stuck in a dead-end job at the London Patent Office, and suffers from unrequited love for fellow student Moses Jackson (Robert Portal) who to the poet’s eternal regret, emigrated to India, and married. The stage-struck Odette who cannot resist mugging at the audience between each tragic pose. The Prozac-popping Esmeralda, whose coy dejection renders her incapable of rattling the obligatory tambourine.For spectators in the know, sly digs at historical context ground the flimsier jokes in truth. A romantic comedy in which a jealous Julia Roberts attempts to wreck the forthcoming marriage of an old flame (Dermot Mulroney) to a sugary society belle (Cameron Diaz), its songs are left to convey the emotional complexity A bit lazy, but it works. However, despite this meticulous simulation of genuine experience, Leigh’s work is no less mannered than Greenaway’s, no more “real” than Merchant- Ivory’s, and as full of italicised performance as a Carry On Career Girls (15) exhibits all of these characteristics.

There are now nearly twice as many badgers as foxes – but they enjoy as much if – not more – protection as Britain’s rarest wildlife.They are the only species to be safeguarded by a special Act of Parliament all of their own. Their numbers are doubling every eight years and a government committee has sat for half a decade to discuss what to do.It’s not easy. A special goose-proof fence has had to be erected around the magnificent Palm House, and rare plants are being endangered by badgers snuffling in their mulch.While Brock has had a good press ever since The Wind In The Willows, Canada geese are not easy to love. Thugs with wings, they drive out other birds and even attack children. The lawns were littered with the birds’ droppings and raked by the beasts’ claws. He was one of six people convicted of a murder in 1991 but, though he pleaded guilty and turned state witness, he was the only one of the six to be condemned to death. Just last month he said: “Ridding the world of these often hidden weapons will help to save the lives of tens of thousands of men and women and innocent children in the years to come.” His resolve crumbled, however, when it was brought to his attention that the thousands of innocents in question were not Americans.

His blunt refusal to allow the Senate to hold a hearing on William Weld’s candidacy for the Mexico post has been the talking point of Washington all summer. “How to make enemies and not influence people” might be an appropriate formulation to describe America’s performance on the world stage this past week. The Church of England ought to be worried.Paul Handley is editor of the `Church Times’.. Without any sort of informed debate on the subject, the pressure for disestablishment is growing fast. In Bloomin’ Marvellous, Jack must tell his mother that Liz is pregnant “She’ll know that we’ve been sleeping together,” he quavers.