Housework on ice
Simon Hoggart
Where do the commentators on the Winter Olympics (BBC2) go for the other three years and 50 weeks? I imagine them living in caves. Then, just after Christmas, BBC executives drop haunches of roast venison outside the caves and when the commentators are tempted out by the irresistible smell they are scooped up into Land Rovers, locked in the back with the dogs, then crated out to the venue. There they can deploy the expert knowledge only they possess: ‘At 1.15.87 she is just 1.42 off the pace!’, or, ‘She wants to follow that great second place in Milwaukee last year, and Italy is expecting a lot of her.’ Or, in the curling, ‘That really is a beautiful stone’, and you ask yourself, ‘Why?’ To these people, Rhona Martin and Joel Retornaz are as familiar as Wayne Rooney or Freddie Flintoff to the rest of us. Presumably, copies of Curling Monthly and What Two-Man Bob? are occasionally dropped off at the cave mouth, so they can say things like, ‘Of course his third heat at Salt Lake in ’02 was a massive disappointment for him ... ’ Actually, I have enjoyed the curling. Once you stop listening to people who know far too much about it, you can appreciate the artful strategy and the tactics. Even the frantic brushing — the housework on ice — is skilful, speeding or slowing the stone, edging it in the required direction. It is a little like snooker on ice, and once every four years is just enough to satisfy my appetite for the game.
Many of the most successful television shows go through four stages: cult status, mass popularity, self-parody and, finally, decadence. A classic example was Little Britain. Ricky Gervais skipped the last two stages by making only two series of The Office. Footballers’ Wives (ITV, Thursday) is now at the final stage, signalled when we learnt that Amber, the grieving widow of Earls Park star and Beckham-lookalike Conrad Gates, has had his remains carbonised into a huge fake diamond and mounted on a gangsta rapper-style ring. I bet that had them hugging themselves at the script meeting. Oh, and there was also murder, bigamy, lesbianism, a cat fight, a lingerie model in scanty lingerie, and some serious GBH. None of the cast from the first series of the show is left, except, amazingly, Gillian Taylforth in a guest appearance, a faint reminder of a forgotten past, as if Stanley Matthews’s widow were to turn up at a Blackpool reunion. But no rape, and no bisexual babies. FW is going soft. The final stage will, I assume, be oblivion, and cannot be very long delayed.
The Apprentice (BBC2, Wednesday) is back with the preening Sir Alan Sugar. (Why does one feel that some knighthoods ought to be in inverted commas, as in ‘Sir’ Richard Branson and the ‘Sir’ that ‘Sir’ Ben Kingsley has on his film posters?) His opening gambit, ‘I am the most belligerent person you could ever come across’, made you feel that he must be awfully insecure. The show takes 14 youngish persons who want to be entrepreneurs and earn a ‘sixfigure salary’ working for Sir Alan. They are selected so that the viewer will really hate all but, say, two of them. You know the nice ones can’t win, and you long for the rest to lose. They talk in business and management jargon: ‘I’m gonna close the deal now,’ means ‘I am going to buy this box of apples.’ In this week’s test, the young persons persuade members of the public to pay ludicrous prices for their fruit. Because they are brilliant salesmen? No, because paying £2 for an orange is a small price for appearing on TV.
The money shot in each programme is someone being fired and walking off looking bitter. All ‘reality’ shows now have to humiliate people, as in Masterchef Goes Large (BBC2, Friday), in which two professional chefs pour scorn on hopeful amateurs. ‘Stuart has managed to deliver a piece of fish that was overcooked and raw at the same time. Now, that is a stunning achievement.’ Will the pendulum swing, so that on Pop Idol judges say, ‘You have a voice like a nightingale, and I could listen to it all day’? No, not soon.
You might enjoy My Name Is Earl (Channel 4, Friday), which is an American sitcom about a reformed petty crook who just wants to help people — with, as they say in listings magazines, disastrous results. It could be immensely condescending to the trailer-park trash the show is set among, yet it’s oddly beguiling and even generous. The script is wonderfully crisp: ‘This is making me sweat like a whore in church.’ Earl, having accidentally ruined his ex-wife’s second wedding, wants to make up to her: ‘Ah never found a wedding-dress sale where all the dresses were under $50 — look, this one’s guaranteed not worn more than eight times!’ It’s sweet and engaging.
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