CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: Boozy teacher’s story may not stand up in court… like her after a bender

The Teacher

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The Great Cookbook Challenge With Jamie Oliver 

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Paul Whitehouse’s crusty old buffer, mumbling tall stories from his club armchair on the Fast Show about his wicked youth, had an excuse for every occasion: he was very, very drunk at the time.

Head of English Jenna Garvey (Sheridan Smith) used the same defence on The Teacher (C5) after she was suspended and arrested over allegations of sex in a nightclub toilet with a 15-year-old pupil.

Is she guilty? How’s she supposed to know? ‘This is gonna sound bad,’ she explains to police, ‘but I have blackouts when I drink.’

If it goes to court, that might not stand up well . . . a bit like Miss Garvey, after a couple of bottles of Chateau Collapseau.

Every schoolboy has a favourite teacher, and you can see why an impressionable fifth former might get the wrong idea about this one.

Sheridan Smith (pictured) is never better than when playing complicated, flawed women with hearts of gold. She is relishing this role, making us believe that Miss is a dedicated and talented teacher with a gift for bringing literature alive 

She staggers into class reeking of tequila and fags from the night before, with her skirt riding up so high her thigh tattoo is on display.

Then she keeps him behind after lessons for extra poetry tuition.

She’s not the only one with some inappropriate notions about education — half the female staff have their tongues hanging out when the lads of the rugby team saunter through the corridors with their shirts off. 

If that’s what schools are like nowadays, they haven’t changed much since the era of X-certificate comedies with titles like Confessions Of A Naughty French Mistress.

Sheridan is never better than when playing complicated, flawed women with hearts of gold. She is relishing this role, making us believe that Miss is a dedicated and talented teacher with a gift for bringing literature alive.

Jamie Oliver lost me within the first half hour of The Great Cookbook Challenge (C4). The concept seemed a good one: amateur cooks show off their best recipes, in the hope of landing a publishing deal

She wants to see every one of her class do better than they imagined possible — including the snide girl whose mum (fellow teacher Nina, played by Sharon Rooney) is doing her homework for her.

Even on days when she’s not piecing together a drunken night from the obscene messages on her phone, there are strong signs that Miss Garvey’s private life is more toxic than Chernobyl.

Her car looks like a skip on wheels, and her flat the municipal tip. Between lessons, she dashes round the back of the building for a smoke. She’s flirting feverishly with a married teacher — and her father talks to her like she’s 12.

You wouldn’t want her in charge of a pet shop, never mind a school room. Sheridan is treading a dangerous line. One wobble too far and she’ll lose our sympathy. It’ll take a masterclass to keep us on her side.

Jamie Oliver lost me within the first half hour of The Great Cookbook Challenge (C4). The concept seemed a good one: amateur cooks show off their best recipes, in the hope of landing a publishing deal.

But cookery contests only work when the contestants are competing together.

Jamie sent them up to the judge’s table one at a time, so that the show became a long sequence of one-off courses and quick criticisms. We needed to see much more from each cook.

Worse, the head judge was the publisher, Penguin’s Louise Moore — and book people speak in a special jargon that sounds something like English but isn’t.

Tasting a Filipino dish by a keen chef called Rex, she said: ‘The question is, can he bring it across to a level that is starting out in this cuisine?’ The individual words make sense, but the sentence certainly doesn’t.

Six of the eight cooks were rejected at the end, which felt more like a massacre than a TV game. And since Jamie wasn’t a judge, what exactly was he meant to be doing there? The whole thing was half-baked.

Rhyming slang of the night: Bradley and Barney Walsh were trying to name all the countries that border Poland, on Breaking Dad (ITV). Brad couldn’t think of the last one, until his son hinted that it sounded like ‘Tom Cruise’. The answer: Belarus. That’s mission impossible…

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