reality TV
Barney Harsent
First appearances can be deceptive. You should notice them, take heed of them and then park them. This was the advice of Phillipa Darcy who, along with her daughter, Bertie, was interviewing candidates for a job as assistant manager for Whickam House, an estate that doubles as a wedding venue, in Channel 4’s latest fixed-rig embarrassment machine. Real candidates lined up to be interviewed for real jobs, by real bosses, and we get to see events unfold in all their arse-clenching, sweaty-palmed glory.We would all do well to heed the advice of Phillipa (pictured below, with Bertie). On first Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Where do they find them? The candidates for each new series of The Apprentice, that is. It's not as if they don't know the score by now - humiliation, first in the boardroom by Lord Sugar and his clunking putdowns, and then on nationwide television. But it makes good telly, so hoorah for series 11, with 18 more numpties vying for Sugar's £250,000 investment in their business plan.After the last series ended, the inestimable Nick Hewer retired from being (alongside the newly ennobled Karren, now Dame Brady) Sugar's “eyes and ears”, and the producers have surpassed themselves in bringing in Read more ...
Barney Harsent
So Gogglebox, a programme that allows voyeurs to watch viewers, has made it to series six. Rarely has telly been more knowingly “meta”. I can only think of Game for a Laugh’s catchprase, “Watching you, watching us, watching you, watching us,” but that was: a) nowhere near a true representation of how the show actually worked; b) creepy and weird.In any case, a nation (or at least a sizeable portion of it, with figures regularly breaking four million) settled down to welcome back old friends with what would have been open arms had they not had their hands glued to their phones, lest the Read more ...
Matthew Wright
In the end, I had to disable every auto-correction feature in my word processing package to complete the sentence. Wiggly red lines and pop-up boxes were swarming all over the words “philosophy” and “Cheryl”. But eventually the machine understood: Cheryl’s fourth album has a philosophy. Not only that, but it also has a philosopher (Alan Watts) intoning worthily on the opening track about the meaning of life, with Cheryl first speaking, then (on subsequent tracks) singing her response.What she says is perfectly sensible at the level, perhaps, of a lifestyle column in a glossy magazine, though Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's on later in the year than usual, but The Apprentice is back. Yippee! For the tenth series Lord Sugar and his producers have done a little tinkering with the format - enough to keep it fresh but without upsetting its dedicated fans, of which I am one - and last night 20 hopefuls lined up in the boardroom (instead of 16, as previously) to hear him run them through their paces.The personal statements from the deluded fools – do they really think Sugar would invest £250,000 in them? - contained many laugh-out-loud moments as they spouted business clichés and puffed-up self- Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It feels as though 2014 was the year in which the Twitter generation finally woke up and realised what it had done. For five years a quiet, unassuming baking competition had risen through the ranks to become the most polite BBC One ratings juggernaut in the corporation’s history. Frankly, the world was ready for a bearded ginger Irishman to throw his baked Alaska in the bin and storm off into the great British countryside.In the end (and let’s not pretend that there won’t be spoilers from the off), it was slow and steady that won the race. Retiree Nancy Birtwhistle’s creations rarely brought Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Since Big Brother, Channel 4 has become expert at selecting naively self-promoting members of the public, and rubbing their unsuspecting apple cheeks into choice and unsavoury anatomical and psychological corners, for general public amusement. The title of this series suggests only a cosmetic variation on that theme, the question merely being whether it’s Islamists, Russian separatists or the weather that gets them first.In fact, the surprise of this series so far (though there’s still time for disaster...) is how lovely everything is. The scenery is unspeakably beautiful, they’re doing some Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Great idea. Round up a dozen 20-something American girls whose idea of a royal family is the Kardashians, whisk them off to a stately pile somewhere in the south of England, and put them in a beauty contest to see which one can take the fancy of a bloke who might just be Prince Harry.... but a terrible programme. Matt Hicks, the fey posh chap with slightly Harry-esque ginger hair who (oddly) looks like both Wills and Harry after they've been processed through a Photoshop blender, is a personality-vacuum blessed with the chat-up skills of the Speaking Clock ("er... you're a bit brazen"). Also Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
If you’re a channel trying to prove that there is life in a tired old format, it’s hard to think of a more effective way than signing up Kylie Minogue. It’s tough for a telly talent show to make an impact in those early weeks, before the audience has warmed enough to the contestants to begin rooting for them or otherwise, but the prospect of will.i.am serenading the diminutive diva during the judges’ opening medley of “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” and “I Predict a Riot” was reason enough to tune in to the third series of The Voice.The contestants were almost exclusively pale, skinny Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Amongst my friends, I am known as an admirer of the baked good in just about all of its forms: the loaf, the sponge, the ubiquitous cupcake. And yet something about The Great British Bake Off has always put me off. The relentless commercialisation of certain stereotypes of post-war frugality, typically practised by female heads of house, over the past few years has left a progressively nastier taste in my mouth as national austerity has hit harder. I’m not sure whether the final straw was the Sewing Bee spin-off, or judge Mary Berry’s charming remarks in relation to feminism.What makes 'Bake Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Two new dragons have joined the Dragons’ Den, and it may be even scarier for them than it is for the entrepreneurs. How can pale, uppercrust, celebrity hotel designer Kelly Hoppen possibly match up to our ‘ilary, the trucking queen with the Buzz Lightyear shoulder-pads and the bass-baritone snarl? And how can a faceless cloud-computing bloke supplant Theo, the affable little emperor of high-street bras and waspies? Will we the viewers invest 60 minutes of our precious time in 100 percent of their business?Call me cynical, but my acid test is whether Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse would Read more ...
Veronica Lee
“My effortless superiority will take me all the way”, “I'm half machine. I can process things at a speed that is out of this world”, “I have the energy of a Duracell bunny, the sex appeal of Jessica Rabbit, and a brain like Einstein.” Yes, it's that time of year again when a bunch of deluded, fantastical egomaniacs line up to trouser £250,000 from Lord Sugar to invest in their business and jostle, connive and generally make themselves look silly for our entertainment.The eight men and eight women chosen (pictured below) are a pleasing collection of fools and future leaders. They have primped Read more ...