ITV has had 70 years to prepare for the landmark birthday it’s just reached.
You’d think then it might have prepared something worthy of the occasion, like a big-budget drama, comedy or even An Audience With . . . Peter Kay, Bradley Walsh and Ant & Dec.
Instead, it’s got an apologetic “ITV at 70” advert running on a loop and a third-hand reality show which it described, with some brass neck, this week, as “Big Brother series three.”
Whether this is because senior ITV executives think its viewers are morons or they genuinely believe we’ve forgotten the other 20 series broadcast by Channel 4 and Channel 5, I cannot be sure, but I have bad news for them on both fronts.
ITV’s core audience clearly understands our main commercial network’s populist role a lot better than its bosses and judging by the opening show, the only thing that sets this latest series apart from the others is an accent barrier.
Because, on opening night, either the contestants couldn’t understand AJ Odudu, AJ couldn’t understand the contestants or I couldn’t understand any of them.
First to arrive, however, was an Indian lad by the name of Gani who, according to the captions said: “At 22, I explored the sexuality of pie.”
Each to his own, I guess, but he clearly hadn’t explored it half as much as second contestant Cameron, a farmer from Somerset who’s the size of Rutland and had obliterated the food budget before the games masters had even drawn up the first task.
What hope the others have of surviving, while Cameron’s around?
I don’t care, but following in his mighty footsteps, on Sunday, we had: Caroline who’s broken off five engagements and blames the blokes for all of them. Elsa, who became a Christian “Because I see dead people.” (Any sign of Fred West?).
And Tory girl Emily who took the wind right out of AJ and Will Best’s sails when she said: “I know this isn’t Love Island but I’m hoping to meet my hubby.”
So badly did Emily’s combination of desperation and unfashionable politics go down that she was voted out immediately, without anyone showing subsequent signs of missing the girl.
And why would they?
There’s hardly a gap in the market for posturing idiots and noisy political causes inside that house.
In fact, as always, they’re monstrously over-represented by the likes of 25-year-old Zelah, who “spent the first 23 years of life living as a woman,” on account of being a woman, “Pansexual” Nancy who speaks five languages but thinks “Bristol is in London”, and a camp over-the-top nuisance called Sam who’s got pronouns instead of a personality.
A tiresome affectation that was going well until Will Best tried interviewing his bluff Yorkshire grandad, Gerald, on ITV2’s Late & Live.
“How are THEY feeling? What are THEY going to be saying? How will THEY convince others THEY should survive?”
“He’ll do alright, will Sam.”
Another four odds and sods were added to this mix on Tuesday. The most revealing contestant, though, was also the one who flummoxed me most on day one, when she told Will: “Dairy Gulls has put Dairy on the mop, but now it’s Jairny’s turn to put Dairy on the mop.”
“You’re a Derry Girl then, Jenny?” “Yes.”
Aaaaah. No prizes for guessing why she was chosen to appear, then.
Odd, though, isn’t it. What was once the biggest show on TV isn’t even the biggest show on ITV2 now and is taking its lead from Derry Girls, a Channel 4 show that ended three years ago.
It’s a loss of status that goes right to the heart of the identity crisis at ITV who, as the muted birthday celebrations demonstrate, would much rather be Channel 4 or BBC One or anyone other than ITV, it seems.
Screening Big Brother for the next two months allows them to indulge this self- loathing, middle-class fantasy, but it’ll be slim pickings for housemates and traditional ITV viewers, judging by this conversation between Jenny and Cameron.
“I’ve lost six and a half stone since February?”
“How did you do that?”
She cut out the dairy, I’d imagine.
STRICTLY’S identity crisis of the week: Sharp-tongued, raven-haired drag queen Chris Dennis admits, “Something happens when Chris has gone and La Voix is there,” and he doesn’t know what it is.
But Kay Burley’s sure as hell going to sue when she discovers he’s stolen her act.
UNEXPECTED MORONS IN BAGGING AREA
THE Chase, Bradley Walsh: “Splice the mainbrace is a phrase that originated in which of the Armed Forces?”
Medi: “The RAF.”
Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “The American Xander Schauffele is most famous for playing which club and ball sport?”
Doug: “Basketball.”
And Bradley Walsh: “The Mound is an artificial sloping road in what UK national capital?”
Paul: “Birmingham.”
RANDOM TV IRRITATIONS
THE dementedly woke Waterloo Road arriving back with a rainbow flag walkway and the sort of dig at Christianity BBC1 would never dare aim at other religions.
Professionally trained dancers, like Lewis Cope, ruining Strictly as a competition.
And people who say “Your energy’s high”, when they really mean, “You’re an annoying bastard.”
Plus Stacey Solomon’s husband Joe Swash, Paul from Married At First Sight: UK and Big Brother’s Sam, whose energy I find to be excessively high.
DRAMA? I CAN’T HACK IT
ITV’s seven-part newspaper drama The Hack tried to cram two dramas into one and failed badly[/caption]
FULL disclosure, I am a very hostile witness who was probably never going to like or rate ITV’s seven-part newspaper drama The Hack.
What’s a little surprising, though, is that ITV doesn’t seem to like or rate it much either, and has put it up against the celebrity version of BBC1’s all-conquering The Traitors, from next week, in a fight it’s very unlikely to win.
Why? Well, leaving aside all the mugging-to-camera and dreadful pretentiousness, the most obvious problem with The Hack is that it’s tried to cram two dramas into one and failed badly.
The cast includes a lot of good actors, but they’re either in the wrong part, the wrong wig or filled with such self-righteous indignation, like David “Nick Davies” Tennant, that they come across as deeply unpleasant rather than “heroic”.
Tennant’s not alone either.
Fatal flaw
Writer Jack Thorne clearly thinks his script has been delivered from the very summit of Mount Olympus, yet he seems to have missed the point of the phone-hacking saga completely and is teetering closer to the moral abyss than he ever thought possible.
The fatal flaw that finally pushes the whole jarring mess over the edge is the fact The Hack is a perversely starstruck operation filled with distastefully weird celebrity cameos, from the likes of Jonathan Ross, Harry Hill and Gabby Logan.
Indeed, so blindly does it worship at the altar of fame, the job of denouncing tabloid “monstering”, next week, is handed not to a real-life member of the public, who might have had the desired impact, but to the abhorrent Alastair Campbell, the architect of the illegal Iraq War who Dr David Kelly’s family believe hounded the WMD whistle-blower to his suicide.
You may be too brow-beaten and bored to see this act of self-sabotage happen of course, but I’d imagine you’ll still hear the THUD when The Hack lands flat on its sanctimonious arse.
LOOKALIKE OF THE WEEK
A Klingon woman, left, and Katie Price, right[/caption]
THIS week’s winner is Katie Price and a Klingon woman.
Sent in by H Shaw, of Middlesbrough.
GREAT SPORTING INSIGHTS
JAMIE REDKNAPP: “Salah has so many attributes, there’s nothing he can do.”
Rich Beem: “We’ve seen it before when we weren’t looking.” And Steve Sidwell: “Chelsea look a little bit out of sods.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
TV GOLD
Ryder Cup hero Rory McIlroy provide the sports quote of the year with his outburst, ‘Guys, SHUT THE F*** UP’[/caption]
BBC1’S Blue Lights demonstrating just how good a procedural drama can be without the stifling poison of wokery hanging over a production.
Nine Bodies In A Mexican Morgue proving to be a lot more fun than I’d imagined.
Bill Maher’s spellbinding “Let’s make a deal” speech, on HBO’s Real Time.
Karen Carney’s Strictly jive, although it lost a bit of its magic when The Sun revealed she was professionally trained.
And Ryder Cup hero Rory McIlroy providing the sports quote of the year with an outburst that sounded not just like a reproach for some obnoxious American golf spectators, but the howl of every middle-aged man who despairs at a world filled with unnecessary noise: “Guys, SHUT THE F*** UP!”
GREAT TV LIES AND DELUSIONS
This Morning, Jamie Oliver: “This is not about being holier than thou.”
Strictly Come Dancing, Tess Daly: “None of us can get enough of you, La Voix.”
And Gogglebox, Izzi Warner watching Waterloo Road: “Jon Richardson plays a very convincing knobhead. He’s a man of many talents.”
Or just a knobhead.
BBC1’s Stranded on Honeymoon Island – 12 hours, and £5million of licence-payers’ money later, just one piece of dialogue worth registering, from the compatibility quiz.
David: “If you could choose one sexual action for the rest of your life, what would it be?”
Ini: “Head.”
“Choose between kisses, cuddling and sex.”
“Oh.”
AND a few short words of advice for MAFS: UK bride Julia-Ruth, whose oddball husband Divarni wrote a song of apology to her in Morocco which went: “Don’t run away, don’t run away, don’t run away. I’m feeling you-ooh. Don’t run away, don’t run away, don’t run away. I’m feeling you-oooooooh.”
I’d run away, if I were you-ooh.
