Apathy Sketchpad

The From Hell series on television a while ago neatly filled a niche in the market: a dirt cheap programme people will watch and then talk about. Eventually, it emerged that there aren’t actually enough bitter disputes between people who want to be on TV to keep many of these series going. This was a problem for producers, because it might mean they have to start thinking again and come up with something original. Soon, they hit upon the answer: Wife Swap.

The principle of Wife Swap is quite reasonable. The women swap lives for two weeks and experience a different way of living and, in week two, impose their own rules to try and improve it. Unfortunatley (for the people on the programme) the families who will swap with each other appear to be chosen by the same people who chose which answers will vanish when you go 50:50. They are chosen deliberately to make good TV. For those of you who are wondering, “good TV” is the same thing as “despair”.

Usually, at least one couple will split up after the programme is made. At least once a new couple has formed from the shards. But at least that programme has a point to it. After Wife Swap today Channel 4 showed an advert for a new programme, in which two families who have never met are sent on a holiday together. The idea seems to be that there is no holiday they could go on together that they would both enjoy, and then they fight for a week or two while we all watch. It worries me slightly that people are happy to ruin other people’s lives just to make a TV show, but not half as much as it worries me that people apply for these programmes. I can only assume that one person pressures the other into agreeing to do it.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is a new programme coming soon which promises to be a cheap laugh and is actually quite original. It appears to be a traditional quiz format, but with added distractions (in fact, the show is called Distractions), such as buzzers which electrocute players when they are pressed. It is, in many ways, a work of sheer, pointless genius. Unfortunately, they appear to have seen fit to insert Jimmy Carr into it. It should be made clear that there is nothing on this Earth which can be improved by the addition of Jimmy Carr. He can be seen on the advert doing his ‘baffled by everything around him’ act. He looks around blankly with the look of one who is either about to ask “why?” or kiss an imaginary person, but if we’re lucky then maybe he’ll be rendered harmless by a strict format as he was on Your Face Or Mine?. That said, you couldn’t make that show worse no matter who hosted it — I rather suspect the producers worked this out and that’s how him, Josie D’Arby and her congenital throat condition got the job.

There aren’t too many good hosts out there any more, though. Anne Robinson is just awful, Dale Winton is slightly more camp than a row of pink-checked tents with lace edges, Chris Tarrant really wouldn’t work any more on any other programme, and that only leaves Jimmy Carr, and Ant and Dec. Ant and Dec, of course, count as one celebrity. When you look at the big catalogue of celebrities you can book for a programme, they’re the payer on page six with a little box marked “two Geordies count as one choice!”. And the thing about Ant and Dec is that they have something built into them that automatically makes you like them. I have no idea how they do that. (If I did, it’s unlikely I’d be sat here writing a website when I could be out putting my new power to good use.) Unfortunately, it also seems to make you automatically dislike the programme they’re presenting. This could be a problem for the programme producers, you would think, but really, when the programme is “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here” there’s not much damage they can do, and I think they showed incredible restraint making fun of it as little as they did.