TV REVIEW: Livin' With LucyRTÉ2, Monday; All-Star Mr and MrsUTV and TV3, Saturday; Pushing DaisiesUTV, Saturday; Waking the DeadBBC1, Monday and Tuesday.
IT'S OFFICIAL: BLACK men are "human tripods". Apologies if I'm upsetting your breakfast or casting a pall of envy over your weekend, but that's what the blithely unselfconscious Samantha Mumba and Lucy Kennedy concluded, and who am I to argue? Livin' With Lucy sees RTÉ's ballsy white hope, Lucy Kennedy, the glamour of Ballydung Manor, released from the sweaty grip of those irritating papier-mâché fiends, Podge and Rodge, and get out and about, living for 48 hours with B-list celebs (which, despite sounding about as appealing as having your hand sheathed in a one-gag ugly puppet, is probably not the worst way in the world to make a living).
Kennedy is guaranteed to upset your ulcers if you are still nostalgic for the dimpled Thelma Mansfield-esque school of sorority-sister TV presentation. Kennedy's scatological style doesn't leave an awful lot of room for a fresh dab of lip-gloss or a chat about her guests' spotted dick recipes.
This week a constipated Kennedy (don't blame me, I'm just providing the context) shared a short-term London rental with a benign Mumba, who was skittering around that city in a damp orgy of lacklustre self-promotion. The singer's schedule included a spot on Nuts TV to mull over Rebecca Loos' skill at masturbating a boar (the kind with trotters), a photo-shoot in cerise underwear and purple high heels, and a couple of giggly chats with unidentified radio DJs, while a determinedly grim stylist teased her locks.
Kennedy and Mumba got on like a blazing wheelie-bag, bouncing around on twin beds with furry throws, cheap champagne corks popping to the beat of their camera confessionals, and girlie chats about Mumba's well-endowed LA cop boyfriend (who comes complete with his very own handcuffs).
Sharing the 30 minutes of their omigod-e-mail-me love-in was a bit like being locked in a dormitory with two yapping, toothless puppy dogs, but despite the dangerously high toxic-innocuous levels, Kennedy is a sharp presenter, and is to be congratulated for bringing a douche-bag of confidence and refreshing naturalness to the table of bland broadcasting.
"She's a Milf!" agreed Kennedy and Mumba, looking at a framed snap of Mumba's "omigod-she's-amaaazing" mother, near the end of their sleepover. And the acronym Milf (Mother I'd Like to F***) more or less acted as a cultural dipstick in the proceedings, the phrase indicative of a boom generation, with Ugg boots and velour tracksuits, designer handbags and well-moisturised, tight-butted boyfriends, and mothers who look like, well . . . Milfs. (Word of advice while we're speaking the lingo - if your partner is a Dilf, best not let him drive the babysitter home.)
DARE TO BREATHE near UTV during the weekend and you're in danger of inhaling a lungful of the aforementioned toxic-innocuousness. Sure, the BBC is silting up the schedule with wannabe Nancys and dewy-eyed Olivers (not to mention Graham Norton in a lime-green suit and a ruched, frilly Andrew Lloyd Webber on a frothy throne) in I'd Do Anything (a feast of occasionally tuneless and teary West Endery), but nothing could be as screamingly mundane as UTV and TV3's spanking new All Star Mr and Mrs, an aberration which shares its Saturday-night perch with Britain's Got Talent (oh yeah?) and the kooky (I really hate that word) American drama import, Pushing Daisies.
Now, I was under the reassuring illusion that Mr and Mrs, a programme that haunted my childhood with brittle, back-combed wives in paisley frocks and their chirpily dull husbands, reciting the colour of each other's toothbrushes, was as dead as the former participants' libido. But no, just when you thought it was safe to jettison the his-and-hers towels, up pops mumsy Fern Britton and the equally mumsy Phillip Schofield, clutching a bunch of questions designed to test the intimate nuptial knowledge of a bunch of barely-heard-of celebrities who should have had something far more pressing to do on a Saturday night than wash their grubby linen in public.
Ex-Boyzone-ite Shane Lynch and his backing singer wife, Sheena, discussed his obsessive underwear behaviour (if you must know, he washes his 30 pairs of kacks every 30 days - it's really not worth going into). Cricketing bloke Phil Tufnell (cue teeth-watering gags about bowling the maiden over), with his polo shirt and professionally blonde wife, Dawnie, eventually won the game, although I can't remember why . . . oh yes, Phil was able to identify that the band played La Cucaracha rather than La Bamba at his beachside wedding. Edge-of-the-seat stuff.
The most interesting couple to fail under Schofield and Britton's marshmallow scrutiny, however, was Eastenders long-termer Wendy Richard and her somewhat tense ex-builder husband, John, whom she predates by a good 20 years. You could have licked the couple's antipathy off the screen. John is now his wife's manager, and with the formidable Wendy, who is about as sunny as January, cracking the whip over John's recalcitrant back, their relationship looked in need of arbitration.
Although the prize money goes to charity, I assume most B-listers get involved because they are looking for a gig, or because their embossed wallpaper needs changing and they've run out of credit. They're not the only ones who'd need some financial inducements to tune into this rehash of dodo TV again.
FORMER SOAP STARS were 10 a penny this week, the sauciest and loveliest being Brookie's Anna Friel, who stars as Chuck in the US hit, Pushing Daisies, now sprouting on this side of the pond. Stylistically, the series is reminiscent of Desperate Housewives: ironic voiceover, witty one-liners, and looking like a David Lynch film, a preternatural palette of pinks and blues and yellows underscoring a heightened suburbia.
The premise of Pushing Daisies is satisfyingly dark (the central character, pie-maker Ned, played by Field Cate, can revive the dead for 60 seconds before bystanders start popping their clogs) and the script, like Ned's pastry, is appealingly flaky ("I thought masturbation meant chewing your food," chirped the obligatory ditsy waitress). But it is difficult to tell whether this series is going to send one up the wall with its sugary coating and the will-they-won't-they (in a necrophiliac kind of way) game that Chuck (who is technically dead) and Ned (who is possibly virginal) indulge in.
Still, if you are stuck at home washing your 30 pairs of underwear next Saturday, tune in. It's not often you get wilting strawberries, cling-film kisses and wrinkled synchronised swimmers with personality disorders in one wittily assured confection.
SUE JOHNSTON, ANOTHER former Brookside resident, also returned to the screen this week as psychological profiler Foley, along with her intense, goateed mate, Boyd (Trevor Eve), for the seventh series of Waking the Dead.
It took two long nights for the cold-case unit to unfurl a script of such arch complexity that I feared for my sanity. Bottom line was that Col Muammar Gadafy had trained female Basques, Palestinians and a few from Northern Ireland in the cruel arts of terrorism in the 1980s, resulting in a cabal of armed, ideological sisters (representing the INLA, Hizbullah, Eta and Clinique - oh sorry, that's just their face cream) shooting guns at each other in a disused metal storage tank in a bit of murky London wasteland, witnessed by the archetypal 15-year-old runaway prostitute with the denim mini-skirt and the blue legs.
I think Waking the Dead might have actually been quite good, despite the ludicrously improbable ending (here, just hold my gun while I stand with my back to you and turn that infant in her crib into a suicide bomber - oh look, you shot me, you meanie!), a reflection I could verify if I hadn't been blighted with the attention span of a gnat.
"How can you hate your enemy more than you love your child?" shrieked the representative from Eta. Indeed, and how come it took three hours of mind-bending script-doctoring to unearth that little nugget.
I just have to say that a psychological balm to trite television, and an antidote to wandering attention spans, is Mad Men, which continues on BBC2 and BBC4 and really is the coolest kid on the block. Ditch the reality and watch it; it just gets better and better.