JOHN! John Barrowman: The Making Of Me, BBC One, 9.00pm
JOAN! Lab Rats, BBC Two, 9.30pm
In a universe of infinite possibilities, sandwiching physical dimension against hypothetical dimension, worlds of rock and water and glass against worlds of air and light and thought, the beautiful gas nebulae of libertarianism against the mountainous meteors of totalitarianism, and matter against antimatter, semimatter and a 20%/80% polymatter blend, there exists a world of extreme volcanic volatility and techtonic uncertainty where the slightest movement on the planet’s surface precipitates such cataclysmic quakes and tremors that all life has long since been obliterated, all architecture reduced to rubble and then dust, and every step taken by the brave, foolish pioneers from other worlds is an experience akin to running a three-legged race on hot coals across a bouncy castle of gravel and stone. And even THAT world wouldn’t be as shaky as the premise that, with a science-based documentary on BBC One and a (barely) science-based comedy series on BBC Two, Thursday nights are now officially the BBC’s ‘Science Night’. (Phew!)
Science, science, science. It tells us why things are as they are, and one thing celebrities generally are is better than us, or at least better than us AT stuff. Just to rub our faces in this fact a little more, BBC One has commissioned ‘groundbreaking’ new science series The Making Of Me, in which celebrities determine whether scum like you could have done as well as them if only you’d bothered to try a little bit harder, or whether they really are exceptional and you were always destined to plough the rather pathetic furrow you’ve been shuffling along in for the past couple of decades. In coming weeks Colin Jackson and Vanessa Mae take a look at whether they’ve got buff athlete genes and stringy violinist genes, but first up is celebrity shrinking violet John ‘Johnny’ Barrowman. How to DEFINE John, though? He’s such a (Captain) Jack of all trades, after all: actor, singer, West End leading man, The Movie Game presenter, immortal. Which aspect of his hypermultidimensional talent most warrants close investigation?
Hmmm.
Well…
Ah.
Ok, ok! He’s gay, give the man a break! He obviously doesn’t want it screaming from the rooftops, and even for someone who plays it down as much as John ‘Barry’ Barrowman, it’s clearly hindering his professional life to enough of an extent that he wants to get to the root of the problem, identify the genes that make him the thing he is and, presumably, extract them from his DNA with some sort of Torchwoody DNA-obliterating alien gene therapy gadget that was found in the middle of a glacier or something. Unless, of course, John’s conviction that he was born gay and that it’s got nothing to do with being dressed in a bikini and playing with dolls during his formative years fails to stand up to the scrutiny of science.
To this end, he approaches a group of scientists to undergo a series of tests to determine just why he is, like, so totally gay. It’s a good question, and after bombarding him with gamma rays and wiring him up to the mains while making him look at pictures of perky, pert naked women and strapping him into a leather armchair with a stack of Cyndi Lauper CDs on rotation they decide to stop messing around and get down to the serious business of proper populist televisual research. So, it’s off to the brain scannery for a brain scan, as well as a spot-the-difference comparison of John’s DNA against his heterosexual brother’s (more ’showtune’ strands in John’s DNA, apparently) and a series of tests to identify those crucial gender split differences, such as whether he reads maps like a woman (badly) or like a man (furiously). And the result? Without wanting to give away the ending, I can exclusively reveal that John ‘Manny’ Barrowman turns out, in fact, to be a homosexual man, and no amount of hair-ironing can conceal this sobering truth.
BBC Two picks up the science baton and runs with it - in fact, it picks it up halfway through the first lap, possibly indicating a lack of faith in the appeal of more than half an hour of John Barrowman to the core scientific audience who are doubtless the target demographic for both The Making Of Me and almost-on-the-verge-of-being-quite-funny sitcom Lab Rats, interesting this week for being the one that I saw being filmed over ten months (TEN MONTHS!) ago. With a time lapse like that, it’s very easy to forget the important details when so much significant history has been made since - we’re now living in a world where Sally Webster has a conservatory, after all - but what I can remember is that there’s a bit where everyone wears giant eyeballs on their heads, Minty the secretary stole every scene she was in and got far and away the hugest laughs from the extremely tired and irritable studio audience, even after four hours (FOUR HOURS!) of watching Jo Enwright go for ‘just another take’ seven or eight times per scene, and the staggeringly topical Joan Armatrading references are every bit as staggeringly topical now as they were ten months (TEN MONTHS!) ago. Testubetastic!
