Boxing Clever: 'Celebs Go Dating' doesn't contain any celebs, Adam Curtis returns

"The narration on this is like one of those annoying JML videos in a hardware store, trying to interest you in a next-generation mop."

Sat, 20 Feb, 2021 - 08:00

Pat Fitzpatrick

I think we’re running out of telly. The people who make TV shows have tried to gloss over it with a range of almost identical reality shows.

RTÉ seems to be focused on shows where former sports stars shout at ordinary people for not being competitive enough. Channel 4 likes dating and z-list celebs. Netflix reckons we’ll never get enough of grisly true-crime mini-series. I reckon they’re wrong. I was going to watch Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, I even had it up on my phone, ready to go, but I just couldn’t be bothered. I need something positive at the moment and the unending depravity of my species isn’t working for me right now.

So I decided to watch Celebs Go Dating: The Mansion on All 4, their most-viewed show at the moment . I love the All 4 app, even though it’s forever trying to get me to buy a Mitsubishi Outlander. Celebs Go Dating starts with a ‘This show contains products placement’, but forgets to tell me it doesn't contain any celebs, at very few that I’d recognise, or you either unless you’re seven years old.

There’s Joey Essex, an American from Made in Chelsea and Gary Lineker’s brother, Wayne. I’ll let you make up your own mind about Wayne, but there is a video of him out there, shot at his club in Ibiza, where he lines up some young female staff members in skimpy swimwear by the pool and pushes them in one by one until he’s left with the ‘lucky’ one who gets to go on a date with him. On the plus side, he sanitises his hands before giving them the shove; in the negative column, he’s 58. The video is creepy and sad. And it’s still better than Celebs Go Dating.

There was a time when the narrators on these reality shows were quirky and ironic. The narration on this is like one of those annoying JML videos in a hardware store, trying to interest you in a next-generation mop. Look, I could talk about the Breakfast Dilemma and the way Joey’s ‘nut got scrambled’ because he was getting mixed signals from Niki, but what’s the point? Fact is, there aren’t many good TV shows out there at the moment, and once you’ve binged your way through those, it’s slim pickings.

Documentary maker Adam Curtis: perhaps not worth travelling up North just for his latest work, but it's close. Pic: Yui Mok/PA

Unless you fancy watching Can’t Get You Out of My Head on the BBC iPlayer. A note here from the legal department to point out that the BBC iPlayer is only available to people in the UK, and driving to Newry so you can watch an amazing 6-part documentary by Adam Curtis which explains why the world is the way it is in 2021, well that probably won’t count as essential travel.

But I’m told that there are ways simple enough hacks to watch the BBC iPlayer over here, and this show is well worth the hackery. It might even help Joey Essex to unscramble his nut. Although I doubt it.