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.
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Week two and I'm already struggling to find and watch bad television, it's not that there isn't enough to watch, because there is just loads out there. It's because I just instinctively blank out when the TV starts producing tripe and before you know it I've managed to zone out and clean the house instead of paying attention. Flip side of this is; my house has never been cleaner.

I did catch my first (and last) ever episode of Supernanny USA. I have no desire to repeat that viewing experience ever again. It's not that the show was bad; to be honest it wasn't, it was OK, but the show is just so shallow and meaningless. American family has problems with their kids because no-one in school teaches "Raising Children 101", Supernanny arrives and is very British as she observes them, then she dishes out some quick fix sugary solutions and in a short while the entire family is all smiles and functioning perfectly. I'm all for a show which teaches people how to raise their kids, goodness knows it's clear that the current generation of adults are completely unable to do it themselves (go go babysitting Telly Vision!) But Supernanny just kind of glosses all over it and leaves you pining for the good old days where the nanny flew with a magic umbrella, sang songs and had an affair with the chimney sweep.

At least it wasn't as bad as Animals Do The Funniest Things, which I caught while waiting for Robin Hood's last ever episode to air. By now you know the score, it's filled with animals acting up or out or just for the camera and it's played for the classic combination of "Awws", "Oooos" and "HAHAHAs" just like every other video clip show involving home cameras pretty much ever. Again like Supernanny it wasn't a bad show, but it was almost instantly forgettable. Just about all I can recall is a swan attacking a man who was swimming and an elephant stealing bananas. I'm not sure if those happened at the same time or not, perhaps it was a swan attacking an elephant stealing bananas from a man, I can't recall. I did catch myself smiling at the TV on occasion, and then immediately berating myself for being sucked in. But that's the thing, it is kind of funny and harmless.

Then there's Robin Hood, which pretty much ended it's run this evening. And honestly it didn't end it too badly, the front half of the episode was seriously cheesy and had more than it's fair share of lame duck moments. Skipping out on the various amusing oddities in the episode it's better to just concentrate on what worked and what didn't.

Poor Richard Armitage, he was pretty much thrown away in this episode. No real big moment for him, just a little banter, some running about, a brief sword fight with Vasey and then he gets double teamed in the following melee. Some hot sheriff/sheriff/Gisbourne stabbing there. But at least he got a dying speech in Robin's lap and it wasn't completely awful. Someone needs to now snap up Richard and put him into a show worthy of his talents. I've got a script for you Richard! Just give me a call, starring role and everything, right up your alley too. It'll be brilliant.

So Guy, Isabella, Vasey and Robin all pushed off and popped their clogs in this episode. That pretty much wraps up the entire show because all you're left with is "super cool" Archer and some not so merry men. They've vowed to carry on as they are "Robin Hood"; like some kind of co-op or passing of the torch. So no Robin sneaking off with his half brother Archer and telling him that there "must be a Robin Hood and now he's it". Which kind of leaves me thinking what was the point in Archer if he wasn't going to be the new torch bearer? Cue the fourth season where the merry men ride around with a stuffed version of Robin pretending he's still alive with clever rope tricks and ventriloquism.

That said Robin's passing was pretty well handled, sure it was a little trite and forced, but the emotional impact was pretty much spot on and bless him Jonas Armstrong didn't make me laugh. It was a good death, bravo.

I can't leave without mentioning Big Brother's latest eviction; I'm now convinced that the voting public don't quite "get" the point of this show after voting out the hilarious Cairon last week and the utterly barmy Angel this week. No British public, No! Bad public, don't make me use the newspaper on you.

The point is not to vote out the strange and weird people, it's to vote out the bland and boring ones so the house ends up an asylum filled with oddities and individuals driving each other nuts. Then we crown the biggest loony of them all the winner and ship them off to a nice padded cell. Crazy people make for good television! Granted Halfwit is pretty nuts in his own way (and must be feeling bullet proof by now to boot) but Angel was so barmy she should have been an automatic "keep in for as long as possible in case she starts eating someone".

Prediction for the winner is either Mr Generic (who's so bland I can't remember his name) or the blond who apparently has the big ha has. I can't tell if she does or doesn't because I'm still unable to distinguish between the two blonds, even when they're side by side. But I heard she's well liked by the housemates so I imagine it'll be a while before she gets voted and then the public will side with the largest cup size. Not that they're predictable or anything (watch me be wrong now).

And finally I'll close with an insight into the madness that is Twitter; after Rob (The Medium is Not Enough), Aaron (Snark and Fury) and myself speculate on the nature of the fouth season of Torchwood. Maybe I'm a little biased but some parts did make me laugh.
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It's been a bit difficult to catch many trashy shows this week, partially because I have had guests around for pretty much all of Saturday and partially because I sort of failed to find too many. It's really hard to force myself to watch some of the tripe on the TV right now, I have to reward myself with spoon fed TV treats (Big Love and Everybody Hates Chris at the moment).

I did catch the end of Big Brother's Little Brother on E4 on Friday, just enough to see the incredibly poor choice of camera angle for the final shot. The segment I saw had three people (presenter and guests I think) in front of a crowd of onlookers who were stood behind a railed fence. Nice to see some people turning out!

Then the camera switches to a wider shot and we see that there is a total of one railing, in the middle of the yard and a total of just six people behind it. Seems like BB is beginning to outstay it's welcome, maybe reality TV shows will start to drop in number over the next few years. We can hope.

I also watched Big Brother's eviction night and while doing so I pretty much reversed by opinion on the Cairon/Sree thing. Sree's a horrible little passive aggressive whinge and Cairon was well within his rights, no he was obligated to give Sree what for and should have done more. Unfortunately it's clear that the public hasn't had the same realisation that Cairon's actually just really, genuinely funny and as such he's out. Kind of a shame that just as I warm up to him he's gone, but then again I did ask for him to get thrown out last week...

Speaking of which, with any justice Sree will be up and out next. I suspect the housemates are fed up with his obsessive stalking, bitching and if he hits the public vote I can't think of anyone who would get thrown out over him. Frankly, good riddance - Cairon was an entertaining clown, Sree is just creepy - I'm sure he doesn't mean to be, but he is. He seems half formed emotionally.

While I'm on the subject of Big Brother, has anyone else noticed Marcus Bentley seems to have lost the will to live? At times his narration of events seems almost suicidally depressed. Someone needs to keep an eye on him in the studio where he's giving these narrations and confiscate his belt and shoelaces!

Oh dear, I'm starting to sound like I'm watching BB10 avidly, I'm not! It's just on in the background for less than an hour a week. Honest!

I'm not sure it entirely counts as occasionally it's funny, but I also caught Russel Brand's Ponderland - Russel's stand up can be a little hit and miss. He has a real energy to him and a sometimes unique take on things. Unfortunately this week's piece on science and technology was pretty bland (Bland Brand - heh) with only a couple of funny moments, I suspect he (and his writers) are stretched a little thin having to come up with a whole series of these shows.

I attempted to watch Total Wipeout for a second time, but as there seems to be no variation in the obstacle courses from week to week I immediately became bored with it and switched over to watch The Fat Bribe: Revisited. A show which goes back to see how two groups of people manage to lose weight - the only difference between them is that the "red" group were bribed ten pounds per 1% of weight lost. This is a scheme which apparently the government is thinking about implementing.

The results are not the least bit surprising (to me anyway - but my academia is in human behaviour). Basically the group who were bribed did better until the money dried up and then piled the pounds back on. The other group lost less weight, got angry about not being bribed, but then kept more weight off. Money is no substitute for good old fashioned human determination.

I suggest the following if the government does implement this system of rewarding weight loss. Eat lots of cakes, crisps, doughnuts and sticky buns and become morbidly obese. You'll have a slight advantage in losing the weight again (as long as you're determined) and you'll get paid to do it. Net result, at the very least you break even - which is effectively being paid for a having government sponsored pig out session.

And that's just one reason why bribing people just to lose weight is a dumb idea - why can't people who are already thin just have reduced rates for everything where their smaller size saves money. Like clothes, public transport and so on. We could call it a thin living rebate, because the words fat tax are just mean...
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At the tail end of this week I really got into watching shows I would normally avoid. I didn't really take notes while watching them, so it's mostly going to be vague impressions and I might even forget some of the shows I watched, but here we go.

First of all a thank you to Dan Owen over at Dan's Media Digest for pointing me in the direction of some trashy TV yesterday. I didn't watch all of your suggestions because other things interrupted (e.g. Have I Got News For You). But I did indeed watch Total Wipeout, which I must admit I didn't hate. In fact I had a bit of a grudging admiration for the contestants and a bit of a dislike for the editors who felt some need to make people having to perform difficult and humiliating tasks look even more foolish with replays. Mostly I was impressed with the sheer nuttiness and grit shown by the contestants and I enjoyed rooting for whomever looked least likely to win.

Of course I was drawn back to watching Robin Hood again, mostly because I wanted to see if the quality shown in the previous episode would continue. Sadly I don't feel it did, the show was back to it's usual nonsense and I think my main assessment is this. Robin Hood is bad, Jonas Armstrong is a complete fish out of water (and bad) and Richard Armitage is just brilliant. Seriously he needs his own starring role in a fantasy/medieval series where he can play a character with dubious morals, maybe a British Firefly type show with a band of rogues chugging about the universe. I could see him as a Captain Malcolm Reynolds sort easily. Anyway, I shall probably watch until the end of the series, at least then I'll have some context for Dan (DMD) and Aaron's (Snark and Fury) reviews of the show (which is how I've been following it without watching up until now). Apparently there are some deaths promised in the series finale, I'm holding out for Robin Hood popping his clogs.

I also attempted to watch some Big Brother 10, but I did find it exceptionally difficult to follow anything which is going on. When there's fifteen (I think) people around it's rather hard to follow anything, especially when quite a few of them look and sound similar. I can barely tell the difference between the two blondes at all, apparently one of them is now called Dogface after changing her name on the show (I can only assume it was for a task). That's pretty amusing, especially whenever Marcus Bentley narrates about her in his always amusing accent.

It was really difficult going watching any of the "highlights of the past 24 hours" and I could barely keep my attention for more than five minutes before wandering off to sandpaper my face away in an attempt to clean off the stain caused by watching. But the absolute worst moment occurred during the live eviction show on Friday, which I was watching while waiting for 8 out of 10 Cats to start. Housemate Cairon, who's London born but raised mostly in America had some major problems with Sree, a sweet overly sensitive soul who'd asked him to treat women with respect. How dare he suggest such a thing, as the age of the gentleman is dead and gone, dem is all bee-hatches and garden ho's now innit?

As such the scene unfolded with this bizarre hat wearing pseudo-wannabe gangster/rapper type just rapid fire attacking poor Sree. It was an exceptionally vile and horrible moment of bullying, made all the worse by the total apathy from many of the other housemates around. It was like watching one of the less intelligent street lads from The Wire verbally abusing a Disney character in the Playboy mansion - it was almost funny just how one sided and unpleasant the whole thing is, thankfully Big Brother stepped in where everyone else failed. All I can hope is the very moment Cairon is up for eviction he's turfed out of the house faster than you can say "gimp".

The highlight of the awfulness for me though was Embarrassing Illnesses, a show which takes members of the public with... well... embarrassing illnesses and brings them on the show to try and see if the medical profession can help out. Sort of like a TV GP. This in itself is quite an altruistic idea, it's a reality TV show which is genuinely looking out to help people and I initially found myself nodding in approval.

But gradually I began to notice the insidious and disturbing undertone to the show. These poor members of the public are paraded out and put on display for the public to ogle at like the old freak shows of yesteryear. One poor chap had his infected (and obviously very painful) scalp infection described as "manky" by the technician examining his skin cells and just about every single moment is punctuated by terrible puns and one liners just highlighting the humiliation these people are going through. All that was missing is a few amusing "You've Been Framed" style sound effects, canned laughter (and other such audience noises), a little "WAA, Waa, waaa, waaaaaaaaa" music and you'd realise just how perverse this show actually is.

I'm pretty used to human suffering being exploited in the name of "reality television" by now, but I think Embarrassing Illnesses managed to push the envelope all the way out with it's underhanded and sneaky handling of the whole thing. I wasn't exactly offended, I think it's impossible for TV to offend me short of showing something absolutely illegal or so debasing I can't even bring myself to suggest the acts here (I guess I'm just too desensitised by all the violence on the telly vision these days), but Embarrassing Illnesses did manage to make me feel dirtier than Big Brother did. And that's an achievement to be proud of.
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