TV Club #9 Blur - Showtime

When it was announced recently that Blur were to get the Outstanding Contribution award at the 2012 Brit Awards, this edition of TV Club was a simple choice.

This live performance, taken from the Showtime video, captures the band just before their breakthrough moment at the 95 Brits, where they won 4 awards on the night - kicking off the Britpop era and one of the seminal periods in British music history.

TV Club #8 Beastie Boys - Fight For Your Right (Revisited)

The latest inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced this week, featuring the likes of Guns N' Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Laura Nyro, The Small Faces/Faces, Donovan and New York rap trio Beastie Boys.

Looking back over their 30 year career, the hip-hop group has changed an awful lot since their 86' breakthrough Licensed to Ill, a point which the cameo-tastic Fight For Your Right (Revisited) makes better than anything else could.

Featuring the likes of Seth Rogen, Elijah Wood, Danny McBride, John C. Reilly, Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci and Will Arnett: this star-studded video picks up immediately after the original Fight For Your Right video and ends up in a dance battle with their future selves.

TV Club #7 Kurt & Courtney

Friday night's on BBC 4 have been must-see TV for a while now, as you're normally guaranteed a great performance or documentary from the BBC Archives. This Friday was no exception as they devoted the schedules to all things Nirvana, featuring a storming live show from the Paramount, a doc detailing the last 48 hours of Kurt Cobain's life and my personal highlight, Left of the Dial which while focusing on the contrasting fortunes of REM and Nirvana, also provided a pretty comprehensive look at US Alternative Rock, giving plenty of screen time to likes of Black Flag, The Pixies and Husker Du.

But for this week's TV Club we focus on the most infamous document of Grunge, Nick Broomfield's Kurt & Courtney, where the British film-maker investigates claims that Kurt Cobain was actually murdered and if his wife Courtney Love was in on it. The film is interesting as opposed to informative and ends up being more about his hate-hate relationship with Love and her attempts to stop the film being made - but those looking for fresh insight into the death of Kurt will be left left disappointed as its light on evidence and heavy on heresy from a series of shady and strung out people who claimed to be close to the pair.

The grunge theme continues next week with the TV premiere of Cameron Crowe's Pearl Jam doc, Twenty Friday 11th at 9pm on BBC 4, this time around featuring a story that looks like having a much happier ending.

TV Club #6 Threads

Contagion hits cinema screens this week (you can check out my review here), heralded as the 'feel-bad movie of the year' with its grim portrayal of global pandemic caused by Gwyneth Paltrow (I may have over-simplified that slightly).

For this week's TV Club, we head back to 1984 for another film that will have you hitting the supermarket to stock up on tinned goods and batteries as we take a look at the apocalyptic tale of Threads which a gives a worryingly convincing depiction of nuclear war and its effects on the city of Sheffield.

Like Contagion, Threads tells stories of personal tragedy alongside the unfolding global devastation, but unlike Soderbergh's effort the misery never gives up and there really is no light at the end of the harrowing 2 hours.

TV Club #5 Micro Men

The death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs this week led to scenes like this across the globe - and led to Sony reportedly snapping up the film rights to his biography.

This week's TV Club features Britain's very own computing genius, Sir Clive Sinclair and the fictionalised account of the boom and bust of the British computing market in the 70s and 80s.

Sadly, thanks to the slightly melodramatic reactions to Jobs' death, I don't think we'll be getting Alexander Armstrong donning a bald skull cap for this portrayal of a computing pioneer.

TV Club #4 Radiohead - From The Basement

This week, Radiohead's Thom Yorke guested on Gilles Peterson's Radio 1 show and confirmed that the band will tour in 2012. This week's TV Club features the band performing the King of Limbs in full on producer Nigel Godrich's From The Basement podcast turned TV Show.

TV Club #3 Flipside

This week's Who Do You Think You Are? featured Alan Carr as the latest celeb to trace their family history. In an incredibly tenuous link, this week's TV Club investigates his TV history, going back to one of the shows which gave him his break on television and saw the start of his partnership with Justin Lee Collins.

In this episode of Flipside TV, the rare sight of the lesser-bearded JLC hosts the channel surfing show and guests include Karl Pilkington, star of the Ricky Gervais podcasts and An Idiot Abroad.

TV Club #2 Smashing Pumpkins 1991-2000

This week Billy Corgan and company announced that the latest version of the Smashing Pumpkins would be hitting the UK in November for a 7 night tour. To celebrate, this week's TV Club lets you watch the documentary that gives you the full Behind the Music style story of how things went first time round in the build up to their 'final' Metro show in 2000.

TV Club #1 Brass Eye

Tonight at 9 sees the terrestrial TV premiere of Chris Morris' controversial comedy Four Lions. Kicking off a new section of this blog we go back to 1997 to check out an episode an episode of his TV series of Brass Eye, which after the recent riots seems more topical than ever.

For those wanting more, the entire collection of Brass Eyeepisodes is available from 4oD here