I am a former gang member. Not a Crip or a Sun Yee On red pole; I don't remember the name but the price to join our gang was a pack of Hubba Bubba bubblegum and, I think, you had to eat a twig - or something. We were eight years old; the toughest boys in our back garden. No one ever stole our marbles.
Thankfully our childhood posse, built on secret handshakes and games of war ("no girls allowed!"), was not a stepping stone to a world of guns, drugs and motorcycles. As pesky schoolkids riding our BMXs, we may have shared a camaraderie similar to that of the grown-up boys of Samcro in the Sons of Anarchy, which returns for a sixth season next Sunday (FX at 10pm), but we didn't have Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam; Pacific Rim) as our leader. The more Teller tries to drag his family of hairy tattooed bikers away from the blood-bathed insanity of dealing guns and back to the good ol' days of boys being boys (and simpler illegal pursuits), the more they get tangled up in brutal mob mayhem.
At the end of last season, despite his wife having been carted off to jail and good friend Bobby having walked away from the hullabaloo, it seemed Teller was on the road to some kind of happiness. He had finally extracted his beloved motorcycle club from the stranglehold of the cartel and the CIA, former boss Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman; also in Pacific Rim) was banged to rights and Teller's depraved buddy Tig was released from the grip of the equally depraved Damon Pope.
But it's never going to be smooth sailing when you're an anti-hero and, if the first episode is any indication, this season is going to be another full-throttle ride of destruction and heartbreak for the rugged pretty boy. Sons of Anarchy has never held back on the shocks and surprises so it's anybody's guess whether Teller will meet his crash-and-burn fate or manage to finally wheelie his way out of trouble - but I, for one, will certainly be along for the exhilarating ride.
Enticed by a stellar cast list that reads like a who's who of British comedy (Robert Webb, Katherine Parkinson, Tim McInnerny, Stephen Fry, Johnny Vegas, the list really does go on), I approached the new three-part Dickensian pastiche The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff (above; BBC Entertainment, Thursday at 10.50pm) with fervour and, wait for it … great expectations! Yes, I really did go there.
Reimagined for television from writer Mark Evans' BBC Radio 4 comedy show Bleak Expectations, the series sees Webb star as Jedrington Secret-Past (everyone here has preposterous names), proprietor of The Old Shop of Stuff. Along with his treacle-addicted wife, Conceptiva (Parkinson; Doc Martin), Jedrington suddenly becomes ridiculously wealthy thanks to devilish businessman Harmswell Grimstone (McInnerny; Blackadder). This is a very, very silly sitcom spoof of all the Charles Dickens novels and, although the whimsical script allows everyone to act their jolly socks off, the first episode struggles to add up to the sum of its impressive parts.