TV view: The late Auberon Waugh once said that whenever Anna Ford appeared on television he would crouch down and kiss the screen. The lovely Helen Willetts and her colleagues at the BBC Weather Centre have the same effect on me, writes Donald Clarke
Celebrity Farm
RTÉ1, all week
The Games
Channel 4, all week
Chelsea Tales
BBC2, Wednesday
The Crouches
BBC1, Tuesday
Many is the time that house guests have unexpectedly discovered me on my knees, sparse hair crackling with static as I press my lips to the breezy meteorologist's raspberry twin-set.
On Wednesday, Helen must have been playing badminton (one of her great enthusiasms, according to the BBC's website), because her place was taken by Amersham-born Tori Good, whose good humour in the face of occluded fronts is an inspiration to us all.
A keen oil-painter, Good had taken time off from her new puppies, Lulu and Boysie, (that website, again) to inform BBC News 24 viewers of the progress of Hurricane Isobel. It was, she said, still moving westwards and would brush up against the Leeward Islands any time now. This was bad news for the good people at RTÉ and Tyrone Productions who must surely have been praying that Isobel would change direction and bear down upon the southern counties of Ireland. By then it had become clear just what a fiasco Celebrity Farm was turning out to be and any natural disaster - earthquake, flood, plague of frogs - that threatened to wipe the squalid enterprise from the earth would have been heartily welcomed.
Within seconds of the programme beginning, omens of disaster announced themselves. Presenter Máiread McGuinness appeared briefly, there was a dull thud and the respected farming journalist's face was replaced with a static image of the show's logo. We quickly re-established contact, but the tone was set for a show whose shoddiness was only exceeded by its vulgarity.
Where to begin? Well, we should perhaps consider the inmates, most of whom enjoy that subtle, fragile class of fame that remains an essentially private business. Mary Kingston, a loud young person who clearly believes herself to be both "mad" and "gas", has presented television programmes, though none that I have seen. Gavin Lambe-Murphy is a socialite and newspaper columnist who has unaccountably come to the conclusion that he is loathed in the country at large. Tamara Gervasoni is that Rose of Tralee whose reign turned out to be thornier than most. And so on.
The only genuine star in the farmhouse was the indomitable Twink. Short of a miraculous reappearance by her near contemporary Queen Meabh, the foghorn-voiced entertainer is the closest thing we will ever get to a Mother of the Nation. Watching her holding court on the grubby three-piece suite, a lap-dog on her knee, one felt that here was at least one personality who might add colour to the week's events. The public immediately voted her out.
The following day, McGuinness, salving Twink's bruised ego, felt the need to point out to the viewers that they should vote for the person they wanted to see evicted, not the one they wanted most to remain. If we were seeking confirmation that the producers regarded their punters as knuckle-dragging morons then this was surely it.
Poor McGuinness was constantly being placed in similarly embarrassing positions. While accepting that nobody forced her to take the gig, one could only feel sorry for her.
"Let's go live to the house," she would say. We would then be treated to a muddy image of a small band of non-entities bellowing unintelligibly at one another. Back we would go to McGuinness, who would roll her eyes and hyperventilate as if we had just witnessed an eight-in-a-bed love romp.Every frame of the show spoke of the sort of profound misery that can only result from being forced to have a good time. There were farmyard challenges involving wheelbarrow races and haystack manoeuvring. There was karaoke. There was Snakes and Ladders, for goodness sake. The waiting room to Hell has such diversions.
But there was something oddly nostalgic about Celebrity Farm. It is reassuring to discover that the new, thrusting, teeth-and-sinew Ireland is still capable of buggering up something so simple on such a galactic scale. How RTÉ must have wished that a farm could strike rocks and sink.
In comparison (but only in comparison), Channel 4's celebrity reality show The Games, which ran all week at a similar hour to Celebrity Farm, was a rip-roaring success. "Anything could happen," Lee Latchford-Evans of the pop group Steps said. "And I hope anything does happen."
Anything didn't happen, but something did. A group of celebrities marginally more recognisable than those in the farmhouse - Gail Porter, Mel C, Somebody off Merseybeat - was taken away to a secluded training camp for two months to be transformed into athletic dynamos (or as near to a dynamo as somebody who looks like Bobby Davro is ever likely to be). They then competed in a series of events which, sadly, did not include fighting hungry lions with a small trident and a fishing net.
There was one good reason for watching The Games. It wasn't the commentary, though that was often wonderful: "He was a member of the fabulous Steps," somebody barked as Lee ascended to the diving board. "But this is the biggest \ step he has ever taken." It wasn't the sight of Davro's savage belly flop ("He's landed on his Jerry Halls!"). Nor was it the surprising revelation that Sporty Spice is indeed reasonably sporty. No, the main reason for enduring The Games was to enjoy the supernaturally oily charms of Major James Hewitt, the former friend of the Princess of Wales.
Lying on his bed talking to the unremarkable-looking Miss World, who, hilariously, was only ever referred to as "Miss World" and never by her given name, the planet's greatest cad was at his ooziest. "Are you supple?" he drawled. "Can you put your legs behind your head?" If anything, he was even more slippery with the men. Harvey, a rapper with the notorious south London posse So Solid Crew, was persuaded that he and the Major had become close friends. "I'd go out of my way to see him when this is over," he said.
Elsewhere James was seen dismissing Harvey's chances in the competition with the sort of snort he probably directs at insufficiently-energetic grouse beaters. Let's hope there is a camera crew to hand when Harvey arrives at Hewitt's flat with a six-pack and a video.
Until then we must make do with Chelsea Tales, a bloodless documentary series which goes among the Major's neighbours in the exclusive London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The BBC should know that the only purpose for these things is to reassure us that the rich may be rich, but they are also dreadful, so it was rather bad form to feature at least one person who was, in at least one regard, quite admirable.
Anne-Marie, a poised American of uncertain age, had just finished treatment for cancer and appeared to be dealing with the experience with real courage and fortitude.
Fortunately, the first episode did provide many targets for petty-minded scoffing. Particularly worthy of scorn was Anne-Marie's best friend (deep breath) Angela Egan-Ravenscroft who looked like a badger in an Alice band and who was so appalled at Ken Livingstone's congestion charges that she had chosen to relocate to a property on the Castle Howard Estate. "I'm not posh," honked the lady who would soon be living on the set of Brideshead Revisited.
It would be very tidy if we could then report that the BBC's latest sitcom was set in an environment where Harvey and the rest of So Solid Crew might feel at home. And The Crouches, written by Ian Pattison of Rab C. Nesbitt fame, does indeed concern itself with an Afro-Caribbean family in south London. But though the programme is decorated with a few ethnic touches, this is the same world of cosy misunderstandings and orderly endings that Terry and June moved through in the 1970s.
This week's episode began with the son of the house craving Reeboks and ended with him receiving a pair after many scrapes. An appearance by thewonderful Don Warrington, who played one of Rigsby's great irritants in Rising Damp, went some way toward lifting the mood.
But this sort of condescending, old-fashioned rubbish is about as welcome as an unexpected visit from the vicar when, through a series of hilariously unlikely circumstances, you and your wife find yourselves eating dinner in your underwear.
Thankfully, a full weather forecast followed soon after.
tvreview@irish-times.ie
Shane Hegarty returns next week