Has anyone seen this? It's Victor Lewis Smith's latest project. The format is a group of people (mostly the same including Richard Bacon and Keith Allen) are sat in a circle discussing one television programme. Last night was about 'Hitler's Britain' other programmes discussed in previous episodes were 'Great Britons Diana' and 'The Shopping Channels'. The screen is divided into multi-images so we get to see each guest at the same time, a piece of percussion music is played underneath and each guest is allowed to choose one clip. The programme opens with the Hamlet Cigar Channel 4 logo parody in which it became a 5. In between ad breaks old commercials from the sixties are used, included one with Rodney Bewes. Last night used nothing but old commercials with no current ones at all buffered with the caption First Piss Break and End of Fake Piss Break. It's worth watching even though it's on Sunday at midnight on Channel 5.

I think Vicious Circle is one of the TV highlights of the year. Admittedly I didn't like the first couple of editions; the background music was really intrusive and annoying, and Benjamin Pell was the wrong sort of person to apepar on a discussion show. Plus his voice was even more annoying than the background music. But the show has really hit its stride now, and as far as I'm concerned at the moment it's the only place on television that you can find intelligent discussion of the medium itself. The choices of programmes to look at are interesting and far from predictable too.

Is it funny? I really haven't been impressed with Victor Lewis-Smith in recent years.