Forced Viewing - Week Three

The attempt to expose myself to a variety of light or trashy entertainment continues at a rather slow pace, mostly because I'm limited to trying this out on Fridays and Saturday evenings - fortunately an abnormal amount of trash collects on those two days here in the UK so I can normally catch a few programs.

First up this week was Totally Saturday, a light entertainment/game show in the style of the 1990s and presented by Graham Norton. I must confess I do enjoy watching Graham Norton on TV, but he can get a little shrill when he's doing his chat show. On the other hand he's completely in his element on Totally Saturday and very well suited to the strange and humiliating events the public are forced to go through.

This week people threw ma tresses out of windows in an attempt to win new furniture by weighing it on giant scales, a man had to identify the celebrity in his shed (which had been 'stolen' and moved into the studio), another man was dressed as a hamster and made to run for 40 seconds in a giant wheel for a meager £565 - I guess we know the price of his pride now and the old 'spell words out of letters you're wearing' game was played. The girl band Saturday were also present, but the most attractive woman was a member of the team who won a trip to Kenya - I think her name was Kath (maybe). Perhaps I'm getting maturer now that I'm more interested in members of the public over preening songbirds. One would hope so.

I decided to watch the new series of Total Wipeout - but I have little to say about that except it's gotten old fast and I quickly grew tired of it. I also gave Make My Body Younger on BBC3 a whirl, expecting some horror involving plastic surgery, make up tips (or "paint on lies" as I prefer to call make up), new clothing and rude comments about the poor member of the public who's inflicting the show on themselves. Instead I discovered a moderately intelligent show extolling the virtues of diet, exercise and confidence.

The episode I watched included a Welshman named Chris who was imaginatively nicknamed "Welshie", I imagine his eventual fate will be a terrible demise on Omega 3 at the hands of Trek fan Melllvar. But before then we at least got to see him learn the horrors he was inflicting on his body in a variety of manners and see if he's able to turn his life around. Like any stereotypical Welshman Chris's problems were his weight and the ridiculous amount of alcohol he consumed each month - around 800 units. That's ten times the recommended consumption level. Or to put it another way, that's around 400 pints a month or approximately 13 pints a day. Amazingly despite this abuse he'd only gained four stone over two years - but his body was pushing 40 years old, pretty tragic for a 24 year old.

But after being shown the error of his ways and helped along in a variety of methods Chris actually managed to turn his life around in a short period and went from looking sweaty, overweight and constantly tired into a far brighter and more energetic individual. So on the whole I was impressed with Make My Body Younger - it's a show with far better intentions than the simply awful Embarrassing Illnesses. But then again it's not hard to be better than that particular piece of cruelty.

I caught a bit of Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow this week which is sort of the spiritual successor to Live at the Apollo, it's a far more energetically paced show with four acts (and Michael) so each of them has a brief time on stage to wow you. That's a pretty good thing because it means they can trot out the very best of their material for you to laugh at. Also if you don't click with one of the acts it's no problem because there are three others (and Michael) to try out. I enjoyed two out of the four acts (and Michael) - Neil's act was superb (best of the night) and Kerry Goldiman was pretty good also.

I look forward to watching reruns of it on Dave. But until then you can catch it on the BBC iPlayer here.

I've also come to realise one thing which I can't afford to miss out on during 'Shield Week' Torchwood will be airring and I must watch and rip into it as much as possible. So I shall be taking a "break" each day to watch the latest episode of Torchwood and write about it here. I guess that makes it Shield/Torchwood Week - I shall dub it "Shield me from Torchwood" then or possibly something else which is actually witty...

I'm sure Aaron over at Snark and Fury will be also ripping into the episodes with his usual glee and wit. He's already been listening to the audio plays and writing about them on twitter. I'm sure that Rob and Dan will also have something to write about Torchwood this coming week. Sadly I suspect Alien Rohypnol wielding Radioactive Zombie Hulk Owen will not be making an appearance as I didn't forward the script to the BBC.