Television: London 2012 Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony | The Last Leg With Adam Hills | Good Cop | Murder | A Touch Of Cloth

In recent weeks, many column inches have been spent hoping that the joy of watching dedicated Olympic athletes has put an end to tiresome D-list celebrity culture.

If only: reports that the Dreadlord Simon Cowell has signed up Mo Farah and co to mentor his latest X Factor puppets seem a more likely indicator of how the Olympic flame will be quickly quenched by mediocrity.

So while it would be awesome if the upcoming Paralympics were to transform our society’s sorry attitudes to people with disabilities by putting an end to discrimination, sneaky benefit cuts and embarrassed people talking over the heads of people in wheelchairs to the person standing behind, I’m only holding out hope for a smaller, more manageable goal: the saving of Channel 4.

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Since letting go of the Big Brother crutch, the once-radical channel has at least stopped filling the schedules with nothing but housemate showmances. But there are a limit to how many Come Dine With Mes and Location Location Locations you can show, while churning out sensationalist documentaries about gypsies and dwarfs and ‘undateables’. It’s coming across as a less cool BBC 3 for older people, which surely can’t be something anyone desires.

One thing C4 has always had to be proud of, though, is its news coverage (which is produced by ITN) and that must be why they have put Jon Snow and Krishnan Guru-Murthy at the heart of their groundbreaking Paralympic coverage, which is set to be the biggest exposure for the games ever. The pair will helm this Wednesday’s london 2012 Paralympic games Opening Ceremony – which hopefully will be more like Danny Boyle’s delightfully bonkers Olympics opener and less like Kim Gavin’s snoozesome ’90s pop fest closing ceremony (and please God, someone keep Emeli Sandé away!).

Handily, Channel 4 now have the rights to ex-BBC star Clare Balding whose informed Olympic interviews put everyone else to shame and who will presumably collapse in a heap in September, after her summer of fronting Jubilee and sport coverage. The channel have also smartly picked Edinburgh Fringe comedy favourite and all-round professional nice guy Adam Hills (whose show The Last Leg reflects his prosthetic foot) to host a nightly round-up.

But it’s the presenters whose names aren’t familiar that gives me hope Channel 4 could be laying the ground for something that might last past a fortnight of sport. It’s not just that half of the reporters and commentators have disabilities – though that in itself is groundbreaking, meaning that the balance of future sport coverage could be permanently changed – it’s the very fact that, Balding and the news crew aside, most are new, trained up over the last year. In part that was forced on Channel 4 as they’ve never traditionally been a big sports broadcaster (though many remember their Kabbadi and American football coverage fondly).

Yet even if only some of them turn out to be any good, it’s surely refreshing to see some new faces to shake up an overly familiar TV landscape in which it too often seems as if the same tired presenters are shuffled round everything. If Channel 4 can stick to encouraging new talent, it could truly reinvent itself, dump the headline-grabbing shock docs and become a place where up and coming creative talents could find a home.

Plus, a few more dozen gold medals would be nice, eh?

For those not into sport, I hope you like murder. As well as new episodes of Inspector George Gently and New Tricks, three new crime dramas begin this week, giving viewers a choice of 1960s murder, old cop banter murder, corrupt policeman murder, artsy murder or slapstick murder. BBC1’s Good Cop is a disappointing, run-of-the-mill series about – well, it’s no spoiler to say he doesn’t end up so good.

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BBC2’s Murder has imported Birgir Larsen, Danish director of The Killing, who has given this dark one-off drama about the death of a young woman in Nottingham a stylish sheen: the look is very noir, characters address the viewer directly as they give their side of the story and the film leaves you chilled and uncomfortable.

Sky’s A Touch Of Cloth, however, left me bum-numbed – but it started out so well. Charlie Brooker’s spoof of every cop show ever (starring John Hannah as angst-ridden breaks-the-rules DCI Cloth and Suranne Jones as ambiguous love interest and dogmatic DC Anne Oldman) is timely and silly; it initially reminded me of the late Leslie Nielsen’s Police Squad in its incessant visual puns and straight-faced double entendres and that is very high praise indeed. But then it went on – and on – and on. Now, the version given to press was a turgid 90 minutes, which has thankfully now been chopped into two parts for consecutive nights. But it’s the same story throughout so I think it will still be a joke stretched too far. It’s a shame, because at a snappier length, this would be a hoot and a much-needed antidote to our glut of murder.

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London 2012 Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony - Wednesday, Channel 4, 8pm

The Last Leg With Adam Hills - Thursday/Friday, Channel 4, 10:30pm

Good Cop - Thursday, BBC1, 9pm

Murder - Tomorrow, BBC2, 10pm

A Touch Of Cloth - Tomorrow/Monday, Sky1, 9pm

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