BBC TEEN

In recent times it could very easily be claimed that TV has been dumbed down to an almost ignorant degree, and BBC THREE have quite clearly caught onto this little nugget of information as they ply their viewers with cheap and cheerful television of delight with little or no educational factor behind their programmes, other than the occasional special on oral sex and it’s link to cancer (as if it wasn’t scary enough for some females!) fronted by the daughter of a well known actor. Or perhaps you’d like to know what kind of impact certain drugs have on your system – well they’ve a series for that too –  but do we really need anymore shows to highlight the fact that yes, drugs make you feel good temporarily but, wait for it, have a catastrophic inevitable impact on your health – “ugh, unfair!”. These shows, despite their educational elements and values, are written and produced for teenagers primarily - as are seemingly ALL shows on BBC THREE.

Hello BBC, you do remember us adults don’t you? Clearly not. Screw it, why don’t they go whole hog and change their name to BBC TEEN? It’d make more sense, and at least, unlike a young priest, they could come out about wanting youngsters, preferably under the age of sixteen, to give them some form of gratification and adulation.

Of course, amongst these “educational” shows are, of course, the non-intellectual shows – television execs don’t want anyone going and thinking now, or else they might actually realise “W-w-waaait a minute, these programmes are a big pile of appendix”. I say appendix, but at least an appendix served some form of use at one point in human existence, which can’t be said for the commissioning programmes officer of BBC THREE, or TEEN, which I have, for this article at least, renamed it. Yes, these shows are so easily accessible that a non-English speaking person could watch thirty seconds of it and give you the skinny on it through rudimentary, if not broken, English. Of course, most people these days have such a poor grasp of the English language they’ve not only gone and dumbed down the language, but the premise, the presenters and the USP (Unique Selling Point), and what you get winds up leaving  you longing for the likes of “Challenge Anika” and the “Crystal Maze” to come back to our screens at a more accessible hour (they are on Challenge TV, if you have Sky, which I don’t…ugh!), and the fact is, they alongside the aforementioned shows built out of rhubarb, despite them being ridiculously outdated (certainly in costume terms), well, would appear to prove  to be more entertaining. There I said it.

Take, for example, “Hotter than my Daughter”. A concept that could only have been thought up by someone on the sex offender’s register which proves to be purely nothing but thrash/car crash television. Andy Warhol (if you don’t know him, read a book already!) said “In the future everyone will be famous for five minutes”. Once I doubted this statement, but no, it actually looks like everyone will have a chance to be famous for exactly that, five minutes. Mothers and daughters, line up to get a makeover/be ridiculed on this show, but one or both must be one of the following in order to fit the criteria of the show ; a) Fat, b)Slutty or at the very least, c) full of self-deluded confidence. If I could get my hands on this show I’d instantly change the title from the cringe worthy one as it stands to “Salacious Slut Scale Down”, although, no doubt such a title would prove too difficult for the demographic this show would appeal to to understand. You instantly have to question a couple of things after watching a few minutes of this show – 1) How many underage pregnancies were there in the 90’s? 2)Why do the women always cry when they finally get to see the “new” them? And finally, 3) Why is Liz McClarnon, the Liverpudlian dough eyed elastic faced ex-Atomic Kitten presenting a television programme? I thought you needed a fair diction and good delivery to be on tv these days? Her presenting skills are much akin to someone jumping about relentlessly, testing to see if they’ve shit themselves or not, wiggling the flesh of their arse for a detailed analysis of the damage. This programme couldn’t be anymore cringe worthy only for the fact that it’s shown on BBC TEEN. The daughters are clearly embarrassed, and the mothers deluded at the notion they are, as the title tells us, hotter than their daughter, which leaves the daughters looking older and the mothers looking like, well,  attention seeking ex-pop stars...cough...Liz McClarnon. The only somewhat emotional selling point of this show is the fact that the mothers are clearly suffering from an early onset of dementia or a body dimorphic disorder, and the daughters, though embarrassed, appear so brazen in their attitudes it doesn’t allow you form any kind understanding or connection with them. Meanwhile, there are yet more vag-orientated-opinions to behold in this show, with what look like the cast of Loose Women, if they lacked hearts and professional make-up artists, who, in an almost Roman Coliseum-esque sense, acting out as “The Jury” do little else but diminish the self-confidence of the mothers and undermine the daughters fashion sense in a very vicious and overly brutal and cruel fashion – jocularly laughing and pointing at the, what appear to now be “instant-victims” of reality television (just add insult), like a group of schoolyard bullies, if school yard bullies had saggy tits and enough wrinkles to make Gordon Ramsey feel better about his never ending expression of exasperation.

The end result is the mothers looking their age, and the daughters looking their age, which leaves the viewer somewhat baffled as to why they shed tears at the end of each programme, whereby Liz, more-or-less, tells the women how they feel by asking “no-need-to-reply” dominated questions in a Jedi-mind trick way, such as “Ya lack (look) gud now, don’cha? – ya luk yur AGE and feeeeel GOOD, don’cha!?”, leaving the women agreeing with every statement much like a nodding Churchill Dog (which, for most the women on this show is an accurate description by all accounts (Ohhhhh yessssh!)), and for fear of looking like further social outcasts don’t dare question how they look. Possibly the tears stem from the relief that the ordeal is over…

 There is a feel good factor related to most makeover shows, but somehow this show just doesn’t leave you with that warm fuzzy feeling, but rather, aggravated and aggrieved that you’ve squandered half an hour of your day on such a trivial venomous show.

Of course, if watching middle aged and young women sob doesn’t do it for you (and if it does, curiously, you don’t sicken me), then how about yet another simplified programme about piss-head teenagers in a foreign country? Had enough of that yet? Wait, before you answer – there’s a twist!! The parents of said piss-head teenagers will be on the trip with them, but in a covert/spying capacity (of course!) and the only person who could be left laughing in such a situation is the all-knowing viewer! Yeah, we know what’s going down!!! Mwahahahah!

“Sun, Sea and Suspicious Parents” could also do with a name change, a simple one at that, just replace the word “Suspicious” with “Voyeuristic” and it’d be closer to the mark. All parents know when their child goes away, or even out for a night, that they’re in the pursuit of getting so drunk they can’t remember their pin to their debit card, and are out with the intention of an encounter with a female/male allowing them a fondle or merely to catch sight of their bits, if not going the whole hog, and by whole hog, I mean having sex. Do I have to spell everything out!?  But apparently, there are some parents left out there without this knowledge, and are so out-dated they not only believe their son or daughter to be a responsible individual, but also one’s that won’t falter to peer pressure.

EHH-ENNN!! (*GAME SHOW BUZZER*)

All younglings falter to peer pressure! Infact, all adults are partial to it too – well, why do you think people get married and have families? Because EVERYONE else is doing it!!! Only in the teenage world the wedding nuptials and nappy changes are replaced with a high proportion of drink and sex, which funnily enough, on occasion leads to babies and marriage  – so in a show as predictable as this, there has to be a shock factor to facilitate the invigoration of such a repetitive programme – right? But, actually, there appears to be none, other than we are watching the parents HUH-slightly-humorous reaction (woo!), after they watch their beloved make a tit of themselves - the boys ultimately end up looking like a caricature of what you’d expect a group of lads on a boozefuelled holiday would look like as they play up to the cameras – making the odd but expected claim that they’re gonna “score some pun tonight” but fail to do so and wouldn’t look out of place from an issue of the Viz> The girls on the other hand, though responsible at first, by the end of the show come across xenophobic, shallow, bitchy, under-cultured and utterly disgusting, and somehow, this is supposed to be enough to hold the attention of the viewer for up to an hour?

Look at it this way, in 2005, after finishing school, myself and a group of friends planned a holiday abroad to celebrate our triumphant finish of final exams EVER (only the exams don’t stop after secondary education)  and to use this as an excuse to run riot for a week in a foreign exotic location that is no more foreign and exotic than a Butlins holiday camp. We surely would have undertaken and engaged in the typical activities these youngsters get caught up in – drinking, vomiting, feigning enthusiasm, sun burn, rejection, and let’s not forget the obligatory score with that ugmo you’d rather forget, and so on and so forth, only…well, when push came to shove it all seemed too much like a cliché to became apart of, and one by one we dropped out and the planned holiday fell apart. Which in hindsight, was probably a good call, because youths these days don’t look like they enjoy their “first trip of independence” abroad, but rather, it appears to be a test of endurance – but then again, trying to keep up with the expectations of your so-called mates is tough, as we all know. But no matter how clueless my friends and I may have been, somehow, I don’t think even if we had gone on the trip, that we’d ever have believed someone would actually be bothered with recording our antics for television. Alas, these innocent pre-adolescents believe what they do will never be seen by their parents – only, even if their parents weren’t such sneaky fuckers as it is, it’d be screened on television eventually anyway! DUH!!! And this is the generation we’ll eventually come to depend on(!?)….psshhhhh.  

This show is a format for the respective youngsters to prove their independence…only they end up proving they can’t be trusted at all by getting pretty messed up nightly, so you can only think what sort of wonderful précis to what college life will be like for the parents to imagine. Whilst watching their children cause carnage (the carnage being the television programme) the parents go through all sorts of emotions, but emotions that would typically be linked to a death in the family – denial, anger, bargaining, arousal (well, that’s dad’s for you, isn’t it!?) acceptance, etc., and when the parents finally do meet up with the children you expect/deserve far more fireworks than are actually delivered, having only watched the bleedin’ thing in the first place to see the youth get scolded…but somehow, disappointingly, it never comes. The parents end up using phrases of pride like “you’ve coped so well” , “we can see now we can trust you” and “you’re a credit to our family”,  which leaves the viewer pretty confuzzled as to what programme they actually been watching for the last hour – perhaps you sat on the remote? Perhaps there was a segment in the programme that was edited out where a war in that country broke out? Or a bomb went off? Nope. They’re just proud their child is still alive, and with good reason too.

The main thing to take away from these shows isn’t necessarily that they’re about as entertaining as frying a half pound of sausages…or that your parents will love you no matter what. No, the main message we’re been told here by BBC TEEN is (FINALLY!!!)  a valuable piece of information..for the sake of sanity ; don't have any children…