Tribal Gathering

CULTURE SHOCK!Tribal Wives, BBC Two, 9.00pm

Tribal Wives was filmed in late 2006, and was intended to be shown off the back of Ray Mears’ Tribe at some point in 2007. However, it was put on the back burner and it’s only being shown now.

Part reality, part travelogue, and part ‘life-swap’, this series builds on formats such as Wife Swap, Tribe, The Convent and The Beginner’s Guide To…. The premise is simple: six British women (one a week) visiting a different tribe and spending weeks living their lifestyle and practising their customs. Previews have been divided on whether this series, and indeed all series of this type, is moving and human, or somewhat exploitative and patronising. The series producers have promised to give the tribal women a voice, though, which is somewhat unusual.

Tonight’s episode sees Sass from Oxford going to visit the Kuna tribe in Panama. Later episodes will visit places including Ethiopia, Papua New Guinea and Ecuador.

Expect to see conflict, challenge, warmth and that all-important reality show word, ‘journey’.

The smell of success?

HIRED! The Apprentice, BBC One, 9.00pm

And so we come to the inevitably disappointing finale of The Apprentice, where, if previous years are anything to go by, the task will suck, the former contestants will promise much hilarity but deliver little (and usually deliver more competence than they ever did before they were fired) and Sralan will hire the wrong person (well, Tim was alright, but hardly oustanding and dynamic).

Still, this year’s task hold more promise than the previous series’ tasks of host a party, design a fake building and, err, whatever the first series task was (obviously so dull I’ve erased it from memory). The candidates have to design and create a male fragrance and then present it to some industry bigwigs at a big event. As the series has changed most of the rules so far (new house, new boardroom, new NotFrances, four finalists, a bladdy woman in the interviews round, new sadly-not-Amstrad phones), maybe this finale will also break the mould and will be a fitting climax with a worthy winner.

So, of the four who are left, what are their chances of winning that ‘dream’ job of sitting in a darkened office at NotAmstrad?

Alex
WE LIKE HIM BECAUSE: He is still sort of attractive.
WE DON’T LIKE HIM BECAUSE: He pouts, he is super-defensive, he backstabs.
WHY HE MIGHT WIN: He is young. 24. Did he ever mention his age? It was 24.
WHY HE WON’T WIN: He doesn’t appear to be good at anything except sales, aforementioned passive-aggressive tendencies.

Claire
WE LIKE HER BECAUSE: She has been on a ‘journey’ (DRINK!) and she is also pretty competent.
WE DON’T LIKE HER BECAUSE: She has a bitchy streak and in the first half of the series was quite offensive to people who weren’t even her fellow candidates (e.g. the villagers in the ice cream task).
WHY SHE MIGHT WIN: Sralan likes her, she is competent.
WHY SHE WON’T WIN: The ballsy woman ALWAYS comes second.

Helene
WE LIKE HER BECAUSE: She is pretty competent, she has started standing up for herself recently.
WE DON’T LIKE HER BECAUSE: She has a bitchy streak and was particularly mean to Lucinda.
WHY SHE MIGHT WIN: She is a safe pair of hands.
WHY SHE WON’T WIN: She’s been in the background too much, Sralan doesn’t seem to like her and thinks she has been ‘tainted’ by working for a big company (which either means she’s too professional for NotAmstrad, or Sralan fancies himself as the next big thing in ethical business).

Lee McQueen
WE LIKE HIM BECAUSE: He is competent, he works hard, he’s an ‘everyman’.
WE DON’T LIKE HIM BECAUSE: He has a nasty streak, he lied on his CV.
WHY HE MIGHT WIN: Reality shows like to give the ‘hard-done-by’ one (which apparently Lee is, because his dad was a milkman and he didn’t finish uni) a chance. He’s ‘normal’ enough for Sralan and co.
WHY HE WON’T WIN: That CV lie, plus he can’t pitch for toffee and the final task involves pitching.

I honestly can’t call who it will be, at this stage it’s anyone’s game. Who will get hired? Who will go on to get their own spin-off show? Who will get a job at Essex council? I’ll be blogging all the action LIVE at The Apprentbitch with Fiona if you want to join in the tension, fun and potential despair…

Brotherly indifference

HOUSEMATES! Big Brother, Channel 4, 9.00pm

By now, the debate about whether to watch Big Brother or not is over. You know already if you will watch slavishly every night, tune in if nothing else is on, or won’t bother tuning in at all. Also over is the debate over whether it is as good as it used to be. We all know it isn’t, but it still sometimes pulls some surprises and class moments out of the bag. So it’s really not worth me trying to encourage you to either watch it or to do something else with your time.

Instead I’m just going to run you through a little of what we can expect from BB9. There have been rumours of fewer housemates and a shorter run, but they’ve said that every year for the past three or four years and the opposite has proved to be true. So expect too many housemates to count and a run that lasts a very long time.

They also said the presenters would all change. Well, Davina’s here as usual and probably will be for ever. But Dermot’s gone from Little Brother, to be replaced by George and Zizzi, who look like yoof presenters and thus I feel obliged to prejudge them with haaate (akthough I will watch at least one episode to give them the benefit of the doubt). And because Matthew Horne and James Corden were too busy to take the gig full-time, 4 are continuing with guest presenters for Big Mouth.

Of course, the biggest change is always the house. This year’s house has already been leaked by Channel 4. There is a lot of red and gold going on, plus two bedrooms (one luxury and one terrible - I wonder if a repeat of series 4’s overlong rich/poor house thing will occur. Yawn.), a bathroom with gilt swan taps, a multicoloured garden (with ashtay shaped smoking area, lulz) and an, erm, ‘prison’. Apparently the diary room is a bit away from the main house, too, for soundproofing. Oh, and the entrance has two staircases for seemingly no reason whatsoever.

As for the rest, well, expect tasks that aren’t as good as previous, with occasional flashes of genius, a bunch of attention-seeking buffoons who occasionally make you laugh in a good way and lots of SHOCK! TWISTS! People who want to avoid the football/tennis/Olympics/ITV, your summer starts here…

Curtain call

NANCY! I’d Do Anything, BBC1, 6.00 & 9.45pm

It’s been a very strange couple of months, reality TV-wise. The Apprentice’s fourth series has abandoned all pretence of being a business-related gameshow and gone down the Big Brother route of trying to cause as much utterly artificial drama amongst the contestants as possible, quite possibly jumping the shark in the process (I’m going to withhold from making a firm judgement on that until I know for sure who wins). I’d Do Anything has also defied logic in a number of ways, chiefly with some of the eliminations (I’m still bitter about Sarah, can you tell?) but also because having made a huge song and dance (no pun intended) about how Nancy is a real acting role this year, they’ve still chosen to hold the audience process as one giant sing-off until only the girl with the hardiest lungs is left standing.

Our three girls in the final, for those who haven’t been paying attention, are Jessie, Jodie and Samantha. Jessie was rejected twice from drama school - with good reason, we all discovered as the series went on - and dances like a pirate while singing out of the side of her mouth, but does have a good singing voice. Jodie is brassy, consistent, and probably the closest thing to the public perception of Nancy (which, given the previous casting of Connie Fisher as Maria and Lee Mead as Joseph, bodes well for her), but has been accused of overacting, and producer Cameron Mackintosh comment about her being too “matronly” for the role suggests he’d prefer someone a tad slimmer. Samantha has the pipes, and has youth and good looks on her side, but, like Jessie, lacks the acting chops. She did have the Isle of Man renamed in her honour, but she has not yet prompted anyone to summon the ghost of Charles Dickens and ask him to sign an affidavit that he always intended Nancy to be a sidegobbed pirate with an Irish accent, which is where she lags a bit behind Jessie.

Neither Jodie nor Jessie has been in the bottom two yet, so it would appear that the biggest battle is between those two, but Sam’s fanbase is probably not to be underestimated. It’s interesting that there still isn’t a clear frontrunner at this stage like there was in the previous two competitions - each girl has a variety of pros and cons, and public support seems reasonably evenly split between the three of them. I’m not comfortable to call it in favour of any of them, but I would like to beseech the general public please to not vote for Jessie, because she really, really cannot act, and it physically hurts me to watch her. She seems like a nice enough girl, but: no. Just no.

Also, don’t forget that our good friends over at I’d Bitch Anything will be liveblogging the final, and probably incurring some degree of liver failure every time the show mentions that the winner will have to perform in eight shows a week. Don’t make them drink alone, eh?

David versus Golia- oh, the other David, actually…

FINALE! American Idol, ITV2, 9.00pm

The alleged “most talented season ever” finally draws to a close, and all that remains is to declare the name of the winner. In all honesty, anyone who gives the faintest toss about this show will have already looked it up on the internet by now since the finale aired in America on Wednesday, but for the purpose of this article I’m just going to assume that you’re still in the dark. So, will the victor be obnoxious grunge blowhard David Cook, or nervous mouthbreathing Mormon David Archuleta?

It was pretty obvious from a couple of weeks in that it was going to come down to these two in the end; the two biggest fanbases on the show going head-to-head. It’s just a shame that the whole thing was so anticlimactic: yesterday’s performance show was dull, samey and just a little bit worthy (even though we established earlier in the season that self-confessed “word nerd” David Cook doesn’t know what that means), and I would’ve given anything for Kristy Lee Cook to appear out of nowhere wearing nothing but a US flag and singing ‘My Country, ‘Tis of Thee’. To a handpuppet of Jesus. At least it would’ve livened things up.

Between now and the final announcement, there’s even more filler than usual. Some of this season’s previously eliminated contestants will be popping back to remind us, and more importantly any watching A&R representatives, that they still exist, while Carrie Underwood will also be popping in as The Ghost of Idol past, and we’re promised “the biggest performer in the world” (hint: it’s George Michael). At the end of two hours, you’ll know which David gets to sing the obligatory trite coronation song for real, and we can all go and twiddle our thumbs until The X Factor starts again at the end of August.

Fergilicious

NETTO! The Duchess in Hull, ITV1, 9.00pm

Scheduled over the next two evenings, The Duchess in Hull is the latest in the line of ‘celebrity goes real’ programmes that all the major channels seem so fond of. This programme’s big hook is the presence of Sarah Ferguson. By the way, can anyone enlighten me - is she still Duchess of York, even after divorcing Prince Andrew, or is she just, erm, a ‘Duchess of Hearts’?

The premise of this show is that ‘our Fergie’ spends six months (albeit a very on-and-off six months) living in Hull and spending time with a family, the Sargesons, and their neighbours, to help educate them about healthy living. She is, in turn, educated about living on a budget. She aims to help them achieve the former, whilst bearing in mind the latter. One of the promised highlights is seeing Sarah shopping in Netto, something that we doubt Prince Philip, last week’s ITV1 royal of choice, would ever be caught doing.

The show will probably be fun and heart-warming, but given the channel and the subject, don’t expect it to be particularly hard-hitting or educational. What it will also undoubtedly be is rather trashy, which makes it perfect Monday night LC fodder. Chatroom? Ready…

Half-time team talk

NUPTIALS! The Apprentice, BBC One, 9.00pm

With half of the candidates having been FIYUD, it’s probably time for a bit of half-time analysis of this year’s Apprentice candidates. We’ve already said goodbye to Nicholas de Lacy Brown and his kerrazy artist ways, Shazia Wahab after the laundry disaster, Ian, whose task and performance I’d completely forgotten about and had to look up, Soldier Simon and his strange ideas of glamour, Princess Lindi and her awesome eyelashes, Matt Lucas’ H from Steps impression, Jenny ‘Chinbint’ Celery and The Best Salesperson in Europe.

So what about the remaining contenders?

Alex
Despite being still vaguely pretty (although his prettiness decreases with every episode) and looking like an early stealth competence winner-type, Alex’s constant whining and backstabbing means his cards are marked. His best chance of survival in the competition, and in the public eye, is to give in and form a romantic alliance with…

Claire
The lady who has compared herself to both a German Shepherd and a Rottweiler this series (self-esteem issues, much?) has had very mixed form thus far. In early tasks, she proved to be stroppy, argumentative and offensive towards country-dwelling folk. However, in a Saira/Kristina-esque turn of events, she has pulled it back over the last couple of weeks, with a couple of flourishes of competence and last week’s inspired ‘being Alex’s girlfriend’ dramas. Sralan seems to like her and whilst she is very unlikely to win, I wouldn’t expect her to leave just yet.

Helene
Helene has probably had the least exposure on the television show of all the remaining candidates. Generally shown as being pretty competent at most of the tasks, she un-endeared herself to most of the public with her Lucinda-bashing in the photo shoot week, and her random turning on Lucinda again after the ice-cream week. Because she hasn’t been seen much and she hasn’t been shown getting on with, or turning on, that many of the candidates, Ms Speight remains an unknown quantity. She probably won’t win, because only nice people win, but she could go far… or, equally, she could go this week.

Sara
Sara is an interesting one. For the last few weeks, I’ve had her pegged as ‘the most likely to’ because of her ability to do the stealth competence that served Tim and Michelle so well in previous series (I still maintain Simon got through on stealth incompetence, mind). However, it is clear she is unpopular with the other candidates, and whilst Sralan and Nick have called them on their bullying, it remains to be seen if there is a ’side’ to Sara that we just haven’t seen yet. Nevertheless, likely to get to the final four, barring any major catastrophes.

Raef
AKA this series’ Most Improved. Raef began as a posh chancer (’the spoken word is my tool’, ‘prince or pauper’ etc) who was part of the cock-up squad on the fish task. Despite winning the laundry task, he still came across as a bit of an idiot. But that was all when he was in Renaissance, who are this year’s team of evil (seemingly no matter who is in the team they always come across as detestable) and moving to Alpha has been Raef’s salvation. He’s been successful, funny, charming and, most importantly, has stood up for Sara and Lucinda when others have laid into them. But Raef is still a posh boy, and there’s no way a posh boy can win… is there?

Michael
What is there to say that won’t result in me punching my monitor in exasperation? From the pre-series VTs about how he would sell out anyone to get ahead, to his rubbish negotiation skillz in several tasks, to his being completely owned by the villagers in the ice-cream task, to his participation in tennis-racket-gate last week, to the Jewish FIASCO, Sophocles has done nothing of any use, other than be an irritant for the viewers. But not a good irritant like Tre or Saira, a really bad one like Paul Torrisi. He is surely living on borrowed time, and surely has to go this week. Surely?

Lee McQueen
Lee McQueen’s form was great for the first five episodes of this series. He was likeable, competent, funny, slightly insane (talking about himself in the third person), seemed to get on with everyone, and displayed a little Lucinda-love. He was probably the number one contender. Then came Sara-gate in week six, and it all came crashing down. He laid into her with just too much vitriol. And whilst he slightly redeemed himself last week (well, he was on the Alpha team of awesome), there were still a few to many ‘roarghs’ and ‘that’s what I’m fucking talking abouts’ for comfort. He is an absolute shoo-in for the interviews week, but whether or not he’ll make the final, I’m just not sure.

Lucinda
Lucinda Ledgerwood could have been in Bond, you know. That fact seems all the more unlikely now that we’ve seen her. She can’t work a computer, can’t sell and doesn’t seem to like business very much, but she can work a beret, Wee Willie Winkie style pyjamas and a pashmina. (She can also manage a team quite well.) She has exasperated all of her fellow team-mates (save perhaps Lee McQueen), yet I love her, the forums love her, and even Nick, Margaret and Sralan have a soft spot for her. Despite her showing very few of the requisite skills for working in a rubbishy job at not-Amstrad-any-more, she is lovely, likeable and a tougher cookie than she seemed at first. Will she make the final? Stranger things have happened…

Frances/NotFrances
What the hell is going on with the receptionist/actress? I’m sure they’ve changed her, yet she retains the name. It’s all most baffling.

Sralan
He’s made a few bullshit firings this series (Shazia, Jenny M, possibly Simon), but aside from that, Sralan has got properly fierce. Last week’s trousers down bit was a particular case-in-point. Oh, and he’s even got Charlie Brooker fancying him (sort of) which makes him almost a bona-fide LC sex symbol.

Nick and Margaret
The eyes and ears of Sralan, and the voices of the viewers, just go from strength to strength. Margaret’s ‘Alex! I was in the room!’ moment has to be one of her best, and Nick’s ‘there is a coldness about you’ was also pretty devastating. Best ever Nick and Margaret moment, though, has to be Nick’s revelation the other week that they text each other after filming to comment. If either of them ever decides to leave the series, it must stop. Immediately.

The Tasks
This year’s tasks have been a mixed bag - but so have the tasks most years. The fish market task was a good opener, and the laundry task was also a nice concept (though a little dull to watch). The ice-cream task was better in theory than in execution, but still worked quite well. The catering task must have been really riveting, because I couldn’t even remember it until I looked it up. The greetings card fiasco surpassed even Nargis and the cat calendar for cringe-worthiness, but the Bluewater photography challenge was rubbish. Last week’s Morocco task was awesome, though. Coming up next week is the advertising task (selling tissues: potentially very scary), I don’t know what will be in week ten, but the rottweilers will presumably back for week eleven interviews. However, if they invent an actual good task for this year’s final that actually makes a difference to who will win the show, unlike the piss-weak finales of the past three series (two of which also had a rubbish result, lest we forget), I will declare this series the best ever. The winner’s prize will still no doubt be a rubbish job, though.

This week’s task looks promising, as our hapless wonders go to the NEC for a wedding show. Their mission is to sell wedding dresses and associated tat/accessories to the poor, unsuspecting public. Claire’s mission is probably to get Alex to take her up the aisle.

Back to Reality

RETRO! What Happened Next?, BBC Four, 9.00pm

Ever wondered what happened to all those people you so avidly watched on documentaries and reality shows? (And I’m not talking Big Brother, seeing as we have a catch-up with former contestants most years) Well, BBC Four’s new series, What Happened Next aims to fill you in, as it revisits stars of several documentary/reality type shows from the past forty years.

The series is a very good concept, with plenty of mileage for loads and loads of episodes (and series) - so why they have begun with a run of just four episodes is beyond me. The four documentaries revisited will be: Living in the Past, a 1978 reality type show where a bunch of volunteers were sent back to the Iron Age, a precursor for the glut of back-to-the-past shows we saw in the late ’90s and early ’00s; The Lawyer, about a female legal-aid solicitor, which I don’t remember at all, despite it being shown in 1996; At the Edge of the Union, a 1985 documentary about politics in Northern Ireland and, tonight’s offering, Global Village Trucking Co., a Spinal Tap-esque fly on the wall doc about a Norfolk-based, commune dwelling, rock band. A slight complaint: it would perhaps be better if they showed an episode (or a spliced-together- best bits episode) of each series beforehand for those of us who weren’t born, were too young, or simply missed these the first time round. I expect there will be clips from the shows in the series anyway, so it won’t be too alienating, but still….

Anyway, here’s hoping for more to come. And BBC, if you’re reading, I’d like to revisit the stars of Castaway 2000, Driving School and discover whether Charlie managed to protect his boy owner from stranger danger after all…

Sweet Child of [our] Time

GROWTH! Child of Our Time, BBC One, 8.00pm

Robert Winston’s annual visit to the millennium babies is with us again, and about time, too. In case you haven’t paid attention for the last eight years, Child of Our Time follows twenty-five children, for twenty-five years (although we shall see how many of them allow themselves to be filmed in their teenage and adult years). It looks at their social conditions, their physical, mental and emotional development and explores their values, desires and beliefs. It’s not dissimilar to 7UP and its revisists, except it takes place over a much more concentrated period of time, seeing year-on-year development rather than every-seven-years.

The older the children get (and they are now all seven or eight), the more talkative they are, and consequently, the more interesting they become. Even if you haven’t been following their lives so far, you’ll still be able to catch up with this series (especially as they pad each episode out with lots of clips from the children’s earlier years).

The downside of it is that as they grow older (as the BBC grow less excited about the project?) the visits become fewer, and less detailed each year. Interestingly enough, this ‘psychological experiment’ has been going as long as a certain other programme that markets itself under that banner. However, I can confidently predict that this will have more likeable characters, more interesting discussion and be more entertaining and educational than Big Brother 9 has any hope of ever being…

China in their hands

RUNWAY! America’s Next Top Model, Living, 9.00pm

What an odd cycle of America’s Next Top Model this has been, what with Tyra’s insistence on making everything green-friendly, the plus-size girl who really didn’t look plus-size, the elimination of Heather, who many presumed would win the whole thing, in fifth place, then the elimination of house bitch Bianca before the final, leaving us in the unfamiliar position of being stank-free for the finale. Oh, and Saleisha’s makeover. Nothing beats that for oddness: let’s take a pleasant-looking if unremarkable girl and give her a pudding bowl haircut, assuring her all the while that it’s high fashion when really she looks like a cross between a Beatle and Bob the Builder.

Nonetheless, we have our final three for this cycle in the form of Chantal, Saleisha and Jenah. And as we said right back when we previewed the first episode, we called the winner right from the very beginning, purely based on our understanding of how the show works after sitting through all eight damn “cycles”. But assuming there are any of you out there who have managed to get this far while remaining unspoiled (and seriously, if you have: kudos, because we’re beginning to think it’s not humanly possible), we’re not going to tell you who it is. Although we will admit that we don’t always read this show as well as we think we can, because another of the girls in the top two is one we wrote off as fodder in the early stages. It just goes to show that Tyra likes to throw a curveball as much as the next person. A fierce curveball though, obviously.

This being the final, the hurdles that remain to be jumped are rather predictable: the three remaining girls have to film an ad for CoverGirl, so best wrap your brain up in some sturdy insulation lest you be hypnotised into believing that you too are in serious need of a peach-flavoured Wetslick. Following that there’ll be one final elimination, and the top two girls will have a walk-off in a typically fake-looking runway show - this year with the added bonus of one girl accidentally knocking over a poor unfortunate Chinese extra on stilts. But who will it be, and will it cost her the win? We can barely contain ourselves, in much the same way that Tyra’s dresses can often barely contain her.

Oh, and if you think this cycle was ass-crazy? Wait until cycle ten. Seriously.

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