TV review: Challenge Anneka — she doesn't do much sprinting but you know the dogs are going to get their new kennels

Challenge Anneka: fine nostalgia for a Brit audience, but lightning doesn't strike twice

Treasure Hunt with Anneka Rice in the 1980s was all about posh energy. She was flustered, up against the clock, mildly pissed off with the working class oiks back in the studio who were telling Anneka what to do, and her in a helicopter. There was jeopardy too — the oiks needed her to find the treasure before the time was up, because this was the 1980s and the only way to make money was to win it on a TV show.

It was TV for all the family, especially the dads, who got to watch Anneka sprinting out of a chopper in a tight yellow jumpsuit. It spun off to Challenge Anneka in the late 1980s, where Anneka would help a lot of people with a community-based project, rather than a couple of contestants in a studio. That much-loved show ended almost 30 years ago — and now it’s back on Channel 5.

Anneka doesn’t do much sprinting anymore, but then none of us who watched her in the 80s are likely to threaten the 100-metre record. In the first episode of the new show, Anneka is helping an animal rescue centre in Kent to build a whole new set of kennels for the dogs. She kind of jogs everywhere, even though she doesn’t have to.

Challenge Anneka: feelgood viewing that doesn't exactly scream jeopardy

Her job here is to cajole local tradesmen and women to give their time and materials for free. They are all cheery blokes in white vans and she’s all posh woman talking down to them. One of the White Van Blokes calls her ‘love’ and she tells the camera that he must have gone to Builders' School to learn how to talk like that. There was a comment from the 1980s if you ever heard one.

It would be funny if it was delivered by Joanna Lumley with her trademark wink, but Anneka Rice doesn’t do winks. (She thanks a hardware shop owner who lets her behind the counter of his shop for letting her ‘rummage around in his rear area’ — this is delivered straight, as if a scriptwriter put it in to take the piss out of her.)

There is no jeopardy in the show either. The clock was genuinely ticking in Treasure Hunt and the contestants didn’t always win the money. You know the dogs are going to get their new kennels here, not to mention a hydrotherapy pool donated by a local business that wants to give back.

This show might work in Britain. You get the feeling they could do with a throwback to simpler times, where everyone mucked in together for the common good. (Although I couldn’t help wondering if so many blokes in white vans would be willing to build a new residential centre for refugees.) I found Challenge Anneka tedious and plodding. Anneka Rice has reached national treasure status across the water because she looked good getting out of a chopper, and some of the projects in the original Challenge Anneka were genuinely impressive. But this has none of the energy or import of the originals.