Five bags CSI for video on demand

... and the best of the weekend's telly

Geek TV Jane Hoskyn, TV Scoop

While Channel 4 is busy sending American TV execs Ferrero Rocher and M&S gift vouchers* in a bid to let them include Lost and Desperate Housewives in their telly-stroke-web simulcast, Five has nipped in to snatch video on demand (VOD) rights to CSI.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI Miami and CSI New York will be the centrepiece of Five’s upcoming VOD service, which will allow you to download David Caruso and continually satisfy your perverted fascination with that off-and-on again thing he does with his sunnies. It’s basically the missing link between the world’s oldest profession (pay-per-perversion) and the world’s newest technology.

In other telly news, the cruel hand of fate is just not leaving Doctor Who fans alone. Billie’s gone, the Saturday night episodes have gone, and now the bloke who voiced the first Daleks has been exterminated. Peter Hawkins has gone to the great sound booth in the sky, at the not inconsiderable age of 82. He also created the flobalob voices of the original Bill and Ben, and – OK this is genuinely upsetting exciting – he was the Smash robots, and Zippy in Rainbow. Zippy is dead. I’m not sure I can handle this. Can I cut to the ‘what’s on this week’ bit now, please? I need to go and lie down.

* To be strictly accurate, C4 aren’t doing this. But they’re welcome to try.

Top five to watch this week:

1. Cutting Edge: The Dead Body Squad Monday 24 July, C4, 9pm C4’s top doc series returns with a look at the Dead Body Squad, specialist cleaners who deal with some of the 32 people who die alone and undiscovered in the UK each day.

2. 50 Films to See Before You Die, Saturday 22 July, C4, 10.05pm Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Samuel L Jackson and oodles more luminaries reveal why you really have to see such flicks as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, Apocalypse Now and Walkabout.

3. Prehistoric Park, Saturday 22 July, ITV1, 6.50pm Now, this could be rubbish. ITV trying to do BBC stuff often is. But it might also be really good, so suck it and see. Nigel Marven puts CGI prehistoric animals into a wildlife sanctuary, and watches what happens. Star of the series opener is, somewhat inevitably, Mr T-Rex.

4. Mythbusters, Thursday 27 July, BBC2, 7.30pm American special effects experts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage use modern-day science to find out whether there’s any truth in them there urban legends.

5. Only Human: Can't Stop Eating, Thursday 27 July, C4, 9pm Somewhere in Kettering, 58 people with Prader-Willi Syndrome – that means they always feel hungry – live together, alongside their carers and support workers. C4 drops in for a visit. Hold onto your lunchbox, camera man.