Maybe I’m just getting grumpier in my old age, but is The Guardian’s TV reviewer, Sam Wollaston, getting worse. Read today’s review. Now I didn’t see any of the reviewed programmes – wild horses couldn’t make me watch something called “Extraordinary People: Identical Quads”. Similarly anything called “The Real…” immediately drops off my radar as being worthy of spending time (Well, once upon a time “Real Story” was worth watching, but there was no definite article).
But it’s the “Wife Swap” review that I refer to. I’ve never watched this programme – its just contrived pointlessness. Maybe a couple of people in six series of the programme have “learnt something”, the same way families “learnt something” at the end of homely US sitcoms from a few years back.
“But this is series six, and it hasn’t moved on in any way. Wake me up if a swapping wife cops off with the other one’s husband. Or murders all the other one’s children. Otherwise, leave me be.”
Really. Is Wife Swap supposed to be like Big Brother, each series “topping” the previous. Maybe Wife Swap should have ended its run (C4 obviously won’t stop making it until ratings fall through the floor), but getting bored with the format is like being bored with Hollyoaks (very easily, of course). Is it just the case of upping what you did last season? Mass murder? Incest? Drug addicts?
Lazy journalism.
(By the way, I haven’t formally said “hooray” that Kathryn Flett is off on maternity leave. What she’ll have to review when she comes back is unclear. I’m not sure how many more episodes of Bad Girls ITV is likely to make, and Footballers’ Wives seems to have finished its run now).