Last Night’s TV: Jesus Job-Swap

Jesus Job-Swap, the latest reality TV show from the makers of Wife Swap, Trading Places and Let’s Make a Koala the Mayor of Innsbruck for a Week and See What Happens, debuted last night on DBC. It takes a well-worn premise – two people switch jobs for a while - and stitches a little new life into it: one of the people swapping jobs is Jesus Christ, son of God and major player on the religious scene.

Saturday’s episode had Jesus swapping roles with Delores, owner of a small catering firm in California. As with most shows of this ilk, both participants were built up for a fall from the beginning, with the producers showing each of them oozing bravado and confidence at the task ahead. Jesus, for example, is unfazed by the prospect of having to cater a wedding reception for five hundred people the following week. “Five hundred people?” he asks, unimpressed. “I’ve had to feed ten times that before. No worries,” he laughs.

Delores was equally ebullient from the onset, quoting her “excellent man-management skills” as reasons why she’s more than qualified for the role of Son of God. She does warn, however, that while God may be the all-knowing, all-seeing creator of the universe, “He’s going to have to learn that I don’t take crap from anyone.”

But, as is always the case with these shows, neither Jesus nor Delores has an easy ride. In the course of the hour-long programme, the American woman learns that being figurehead for a belief system is no mean feat. Conversely, Jesus gets to know that the catering business isn’t a breeze, even for a man worshipped by millions of devotees.

It’s during these scenes that the best moments in Jesus Job-Swap arise. When the irate newlyweds confront the Son of God over his deviation from the agreed menu at their reception, it’s car-crash television; I couldn’t look away. As the bride violently asked why the steak tartare and scalloped potatoes had been replaced by a simple bread-and-fish meal, I thought for all the world that she was going to punch the earthly incarnation of the Creator. Luckily, fate intervened and an earthquake interrupted the fight.

Delores didn’t have it any easier, either. All the way through the episode she has to repeatedly tell her new boss that “you can treat your own son like that, Mister, but you can’t treat me like that!” She also becomes extremely fatigued at the task of making her face miraculously appear in food products, and in doing so, realises that being the Son of God isn’t all lambs and magic wine tricks. “There’s some self-sacrifice in this job, you know,” she tells the camera, wearily.

And ultimately, as with most shows of this genre, both participants learn many things about their switchee and about themselves, which in turn gives the viewer a sense of accomplishment and closure. Both Jesus and Delores realise things that we, the external viewers, could already tell. Delores becomes nicer to her staff and doesn’t insist on working them as hard, while Jesus resolves to stand up for himself more, especially when it comes to his Dad.

Jesus Job-Swap is another great reality TV show that promises to be essential viewing throughout. I haven’t enjoyed the company of Jesus this much since the time I sat on his lap in a shopping mall at Christmastime, all those years ago. And next week’s episode, in which Christ swaps roles with a Muslim cleric, promises to be even more volatile than this one!

Jesus Job-Swap is shown on DBC (Satellite Channel 148 between the Washroom Channel and the Bob Hope Underpants Auction Channel), Saturdays, 10:00pm, from now until Armageddon (six weeks tomorrow).

Television Review: Holy Smokes

A recurring theme throughout many modern sitcoms is that they are driven by the personality or character of a single person. In most cases, this person is an established comedian or actor, like Ray Romano, Gerry Seinfeld or Ray Romano’s brother with the deep voice. Occasionally though, a television network will take a risk with an unproven personality, just as NBC have done with their latest sitcom, Holy Smokes.

Holy Smokes stars Jasper Haines as Joe Patrickson, a priest living with his wife and two children in California. Haines’s biggest role to date has been on the popular TV show Lost, in which he has starred for the past four seasons as the Smoke Monster, a large, swirling mass of black fog that consumes people and appears to be able to penetrate their memories. Before this breakthrough role, Haines had numerous bit parts, such as his appearance in Rescue Me as the ‘Smoke from Fire in Apartment B’ and in Without a Trace as ‘Smoke Coming from Kidnapper’s Cigarette’. This is his first starring role.

Jasper Haines, star of Holy Smokes

And boy, does he relish his time in front of the camera! Given that Haines is a giant pillar of acrid black fumes, people could be forgiven for having some doubt as to his acting ability, but he is definitely the man for the job. One of Holy Smokes’ senior writers has been quoted as saying that this is the role that Jasper Haines was born to play, and I agree with him. Well, I would, but I’m not sure that he was actually born as such. He looks like he fell out of a chimney.

Despite having no facial features to speak of, no voice except for a general ominous rumbling, and all the other drawbacks associated with being a big pile of wispy smog, Jasper does account for himself rather well. Indeed, when Joe’s attempts to put on his new priestly dog collar are thwarted by his lack of a physical neck, the actor is funnier than Jim Belushi in any episode of According to Jim, despite Belushi’s obvious advantage in the facial expression and voice area.

Content-wise, Holy Smokes does run the risk of being a little too samey for my liking. Most of the jokes revolve around the difficulties that Joe faces in his daily life as a priest who also happens to be a giant ball of smoke. The aforementioned inability to wear a dog collar, his misfortune when people switch on extractor fans, his unfortunate tendency to consume his parishioners, Lost-style: these are recurring jokes throughout the series. While they are certainly funny the first time, they do tend to grate as time goes on.

Joe’s relationship with his wife is a welcome element to the series, providing much relief from the obligatory “oh no, I just accidentally consumed old Mrs Gratt and her dog” jokes. Jenny Patrickson, played by Daphne Zuniga, provides a very good foil for Joe, and the running joke in which she repeatedly complains of her husband’s ineffectiveness in the bedroom is great. The accompanying uncertainty of the Patricksons’ children’s paternity gives the show a slightly tragicomic feel at times. Everyone knows that Joe couldn’t have got his wife pregnant; he’s a big ball of smoke with no genitalia!

In all, Holy Smoke is a fresh and funny new show, and Jasper Haines should go on to be a big star in the future. There are already rumours that he will be co-starring with Tom Cruise in a film set in WW2 Germany, and I think it will be nice to see him in a strongly characterised, serious role. But as a comedian, Haines still shines with a murky, foggy glory that really is unique, and Holy Smokes could well prove to be this year’s Everybody Loves Raymond’s Brother.

Holy Smokes, NBC, Thursdays at 9.30. Enjoy it while you can, it'll probably be cancelled after ten minutes.

Last Night’s TV

Because of nasty incident involving a plate of knives and my groin, last night I was unable to go as planned to the Toronto Spinderella Ballroom and check out hot new band Gruntfuck Episode, so my review of their gig will have to wait until they return to the city. Instead, I was forced to sit on my arse and enjoy several hours of prime time television. Here’s my review of that, instead.

At 6:00 I watched America’s Funniest Home Videos on ABC, and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed as people fell over. They fell into pools, off tables, off tables into pools, off pool tables, off pool tables into pools and out of pools and into tables. Oh, and there was a cat that could open doors. And then the cat fell into a pool. Brilliant stuff.

7:00 saw the first episode of an excellent new show, America’s Prissiest Waiters (NBC). Security camera and home video footage captured some of the most outrageously prim and proper food servers in the US. I watched with awe as a guy with a pencil-thin moustache wearing a waistcoat told a child not to throw meatballs around an Italian restaurant. I gasped as a man with a ridiculous combover informed a couple that there were no remaining specials, and laughed as he then came back to apologise for the fact that there was, after all, a single serving of vegetable soup remaining. Hosted by Jon Favreau, this is a superb program.

America’s Youngest People (8:00, E!) was a very watchable and shocking tale of those forgotten children of the nation: children. Nothing could have prepared me for the sight of these babies, some of whom were just minutes old. Indeed, these had to have been America’s Youngest People. How they sleep at night, I do not know. Lullabies, probably.

One of the best shows of the new season has to be America’s Americanest Americans (9:00, ABCBABC). Hosted by Ted Nugent, this program highlights Americans living in America who epitomise being American in the most American way. This show has more stripes and more stars than the Republican Convention, with eagles and apple pie and a CGI animation of Jesus kissing the Statue of Liberty while simultaneously shooting Arabs. Do you really need me to tell you how awesome this was?

At 10:00 I switched over to CNN, where I watched America’s Currentest Events, and then before I sank into a cold, passionless slumber I caught the first two hours of America’s Adjectiviest Nouns, a show in which the most adjectivey nouns were shown on CCTV, phone camera and home video doing those verbs that make them so adjectivey. To be honest, this was a little formulaic for my liking. I’m not sure what it was, but I felt like I’d seen this all before.

I’ll see you all next week after Thanksgiving, when hopefully the morphine will have started to work on the crippling agony that floods my very being! See you then!

Television Review: Extreme Makeover Spinoffs

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is a highly popular American reality TV show, the spin-off of Extreme Makeover, a show in which hideously ugly people were bullied by family members into having plastic surgery. The weekly episodes of Home Edition usually follow a similar format: Someone contacts the show because their family of 300 are forced to live in a stripper’s g-string in the bottom of a vat of acid. They can’t even afford the rent on the g-string because the head of the family (usually a soldier or a priest, or – even better – both) has been forced out of work due to his legs having fallen off while saving a kitten from death at the hands of a combine harvester. One (or all) of the 160 children in the family has a very rare disease that means they can’t come into contact with anything made of an odd number of atoms, and they all need to be permanently attached to giant medical machines that are so big they can’t be moved. The team of architects and designers then send the family to Disneyland, destroy the old living area and build a palace of luxurious proportions big enough for the population of a small nation, replete with specialist medical facilities (and staff) for the diseased children and enough bedrooms to make Bill Gates blush. The houses are built and furnished by companies who consider such generosity to be a small price to pay for being mentioned repeatedly by a popular prime-time show.

The popularity of this programme has led to several new spin-offs of the Extreme Makeover format. I had a look to see what they were like, and hoped that the unconcealed hatred I displayed in the previous paragraph didn’t affect my judgement.

Extreme Makeover: Personality Edition will begin in November, and will be hosted by Dr. Phil. Participants in the show will be nominated by their friends, relatives, coworkers and people who just happen to encounter them on the street. The criterion for inclusion on the show is that the participant must have some outrageously annoying personality defects, which the programme’s team of psychiatrists, psychologists and lifestyle consultants will attempt to fix.

The pilot episode featured Dave, an advertising salesman from Detroit. This man had so many personality problems that after ten minutes his very appearance on the screen made me want to kick the television. He finished other people’s sentences for them, laughed nervously at everything he said, made awkward comments to strangers and picked his nose on public transport. He was also so arrogant that Dr. Phil nearly punched him. The end of the show saw the experts make so little progress with Dave that they were forced to resort to making him watch a video of some kittens playing for eight hours, in a scene reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange.

From this first episode, Extreme Makeover: Personality Edition is a surprisingly satisfying show. It’s really worth it for the final few minutes, when a practically lobotomized Dave is revealed to his friends and relatives, now a much more agreeable individual whose sole personality flaw is the unfortunate tendency to drool slightly.



From next year, viewers will get to watch Extreme Makeover: Cockatiel Edition. It’s a common problem: You buy a cockatiel, you enjoy it for a few weeks, and then you start to get bored with it. Well, this is the show for you. People with dull avian pets can have bird and image experts redesign their cockatiels to make them much more interesting. The first episode had Minxy, a two-year-old female owned by Gordon Sludge of Brampton, painted blue and given a trendy Mohawk haircut. She was also given bionic wings so that she could double up as a cooling fan on hot days. I predict big things from this show.

Finally, Extreme Makeover: Makeover Show Edition has got the TV industry in a spin. Reality show producers with staid, unimaginative programmes and no inspiration can get their productions improved with help from the Extreme Makeover team. I didn’t like this show, because I felt that the people giving advice were bullies. The poor reality show makers were being forced to make conceptual changes to their programmes that they weren’t comfortable with. An example from the early episodes is a fashion makeover show specialist being forced to supervise in the building of a new lighthouse. And I couldn’t help but feel anger towards the expert who made a restaurant makeover show production team start creating makeover show makeover shows. For one, that episode was just confusing.

Special 100th Review Spectacular: The Imaginary Reviewed on DVD

When The Imaginary Review started last year, one of our early fans was Nigel Worthington-Rhys, a documentary film-maker from Wales. He realised soon after the first review that this was going to be huge, a massively successful project that would unite and polarise vast swathes of the planet, and he wanted to be a part of the staggering critical behemoth before everyone joined the bandwagon.

Since that first review was printed, Worthington-Rhys has followed up on the subjects of each entry, interviewing them and following their post-IR successes with the help of a video camera. With the 100th Imaginary Review now published, Worthington-Rhys has edited the footage and released it as a documentary entitled The Imaginary Reviewed. Narrated by the film-maker himself, it makes for some very interesting viewing.

The subjects of the film are covered more or less chronologically, beginning with the first reviewee. Winwood Augary, author of The Climes of Despair (a book he translated from Greek into English despite not speaking a word of the former language), is given this honour. Augary is interviewed briefly from the mental institution in which he now resides, which makes for sad viewing from the onset. He appears to be unaware of his place in history as the subject of the first Imaginary Review, and the mention of the book that rendered him insane causes him to break down violently. The story is left to his publisher, Derek Shatner, who claims that the book’s appearance on The Imaginary Review meant that it sold more than the anticipated zero copies. When asked by Worthington-Rhys how many of the books were purchased, Shatner responds, “at least three!”

The effect of an Imaginary Review is a common theme throughout the documentary, and many of the people featured here are thankful for the level of recognition that the website gave them. Even a mostly negative review could have positive results, as witnessed by artist Gustav Chichester, whose Timpani Suicide installation was described as “drama-less tat” by The Imaginary Reviewer. He claims that his exhibition showed a 33% rise in visitors after the review, but adds that this could be because the days following the review’s publication were very rainy.

Worthington-Rhys’s love of The Imaginary Review is highly apparent through The Imaginary Reviewed. In some of the interviews, it is as if the camera is lovingly caressing the people onscreen, such is the bold light in which they are filmed. In the case of the Cheeky Girls (whose Cheeky Manifesto was reviewed last August), Worthington-Rhys is actually caressing them with the camera, which unfortunately does make for some awkward viewing.

For me, the best part of the documentary is the “Where are they now?” aspect. I was highly pleased to find out that the SwampAid music festival in Annifridagnethaville gained so much publicity from our Imaginary Review that this year’s concert will be headlined by U2, Coldplay, The Rolling Stones (playing with the remaining Beatles), Radiohead and God (who will be joined by President Bongo and the Democratic Republic of Phonque).

In the documentary we also discover that Dave’s Uncle Ted (also reviewed last July), was so touched by his generally positive review that he swore off the booze after reading it. He hasn’t been incarcerated since.

Evil Blood II: The Hurtening, was such a box-office smash that several sequels are already in the works; a similar thing is true for The Golden Rump Ass, reviewed earlier this year. In the four weeks since the critique was printed, six sequels have been released, including The Golden Rump-Ass 4: The Rumpening and The Golden Rump-Ass 5: Rump-Asses Gone Wild.

But not all Imaginary Reviews have led to success stories. Garrulous Industries, makers of the Tring 32X, went bankrupt shortly after it was released. All machines had to be recalled after they were proved to cause dwarfism. Gunchen Maladroit, the photographer whose A Life in Frame retrospective was reviewed last October, was investigated by the police after the show contained photographs of a picnic table that were deemed pornographic. He is now in hiding and only agreed to appear in the film if his face was obscured by a large balloon.

Nigel Worthington-Rhys’s narration on the documentary is superb. He knows his subjects inside and out, having spent an inordinate amount of time on research. “Before I read the Imaginary Review of the Nokia 22-20 Gunphone,” he says in the voice-over, “I had no idea it existed. Thanks to The Imaginary Review I know it’s not an excellent mugger deterrent, a view that I put to the machine’s developers in Finland.”

Some time is dedicated to the things listed in The Imaginary Review’s various end of year reviews, and the people behind the top-ranked albums, films, colours and comics are all questioned about their opinions on the website. Mostly none have heard of it, despite their accolades at The Imaginary Reviewer’s hands.

I can’t recommend this documentary enough for the many, many loyal Imaginary Review fans out there. Anyone who wants to know how successful Freedom 2008 by The Right Trema was (and why he was dropped by his record company) should watch it. Likewise, anyone who wants to see whether Men at Work - the wonderful art exhibit - was finished on schedule and under budget, and how much a two bedroom apartment inside it now costs, should get a copy.

The Imaginary Reviewed will certainly be a strong contender for Best Documentary at next year’s Oscars, a fitting tribute to Nigel, as well as the stars of his film, including the many people featured in it who are sadly no longer with us and to whom the film is dedicated. These include Wayne Carroll (who choked on his own vomit shortly after his Complete Drunken Text Message Poetry Collection was released), Ted the Unknown Species (who caught the very un-pet-like Dutch Elm Disease) and Jerry the dead zookeeper, who is currently being sued for traumatising the children at his presentation this month.

Gosh, that was fun, wasn’t it? Here’s to the next 100 reviews! Maybe Now Toronto will have hired me by then!

New TV Review: Four Radically Different Female Friends who are not Afraid of Discussing Sex in a Frank Manner as They go About Their Lives in Chicago

Inspired by the success of such shows as Four Radically Different Female Friends who are not Afraid of Discussing Sex in a Frank Manner as They go About Their Lives in New York, Four Radically Different Female Friends who are not Afraid of Discussing Sex in a Frank Manner as They go About Their Lives in a Fictional Town, Three Radically Different Female Friends who are not Afraid of Discussing Sex in a Frank Manner as They go About Their Lives in New York and Four Other Radically Different Female Friends who are not Afraid of Discussing Sex in a Frank Manner as They go About Their Lives in New York, ABC Television has been hard at work creating a radically different show. Scriptwriters have been literally holed up in a bomb shelter and refused food and drink until they come up with something that’s never been seen before by television-watching proles. The result? The brilliant new Four Radically Different Female Friends who are not Afraid of Discussing Sex in a Frank Manner as They go About Their Lives in Chicago.

FRDFFwanAoDSiaFMaTgATLiC is more than just a TV show. It’s a brave and ground breaking television event, the likes of which we have never seen before, and probably never will again. It will almost certainly shock and appal the less open-minded of us, as it contains the discussion of sex in an incredibly frank manner. Not only that, but the majority of the discussions are held by the four main characters, all of whom are female.

It’s a twist like this that makes FRDFFwanAoDSiaFMaTgATLiC such a courageous risk by ABC. Another courageous move is the way that the four female friends are so radically different from each other: one is ‘normal’, another is a bit of a prude, one is incredibly cynical and the last one is quite promiscuous. These differences could play havoc with the audience’s perceptions (“you mean we have to memorise the characters of four radically different people? Whoa!”), but while I was a little confused at first, the more I watched the show, the more I remembered who was who. (However, if you’re worried you may not be able to follow the plot, ABC have created a wonderful guide to the characters – with pictures and everything! – which is downloadable from their website)

As I watched this riveting new show, I was constantly amazed by how much these four female friends (who are radically different) could discuss sex. The frank manner that they do this is sometimes shocking, but always enjoyable. Indeed, one may think that they may be afraid to do so much sex-discussing, but they are not afraid at all! This is a very wonderful facet of the show, this lack of fear of discussing sex as the aforementioned four female friends go about their lives in Chicago (with their radical differences, let’s not forget).

And their lives! They’re so interesting! Because the four female friends (who are not afraid of discussing sex in a frank manner) are so different, it’s a pleasure watching them go about their lives in Chicago.

Incidentally, the location of the show was a bone of contention for a large part of the writing process. Apparently, many of the writers wanted to have the show in New York, but some people thought it would be better to have the four friends and their radically different lives (including all that sex discussion) in Chicago. It was a gamble, and I think it paid off.

Given the popularity of Four Radically Different Female Friends who are not Afraid of Discussing Sex in a Frank Manner as They go About Their Lives in New York: The Movie (in which the main character wakes up in a mental institute and discovers that the last ten years have been spent in a drug-induced hallucinatory state in the asylum, slowly breaking down mentally as the realisation that her entire life is a lie sinks in), Four Radically Different Female Friends who are not Afraid of Discussing Sex in a Frank Manner as They go About Their Lives in Chicago can only be a success! I will await future episodes with bated breath, like a fanboy sniper in the prime-time TV war zone!

Four Radically Different Female Friends who are not Afraid of Discussing Sex in a Frank Manner as They go About Their Lives in Chicago would have been shown on ABC, Tuesdays at 9.00 if it hadn’t been cancelled already.

DVD Review: The Best of BBC’s Turing Test Challenge

Our imaginary review copy of the DVD didn't come with a cover

so we paid someone to make this poor artist's impression of what it might look like.

The tenth season of Robot Wars, filmed in 2003, was one of the biggest disasters ever to happen to the BBC. The show’s producers initially came under fire for failing to notice that the robot created by Colin Pugh, a plumber from Chatterstoft, was not a robot at all, but contained Colin’s 8-year-old son, Mark, who controlled the machine from within. Mister Pugh’s duplicity only came to light when his creation, Attackbot IV, was defeated in the semi finals by NailGunTron, and pools of red liquid emanated from the losing robot’s carcass. Both Colin and NailGunTron’s creators are serving ten years in prison.

Added to this controversy was the disaster created in the final episode when Red BaronBot, a bi-plane robot created by students at Leicester University went out of control and crashed into the spectators’ area, killing 54 people, mostly children. Finally, house robot Sir Killalot was photographed by tabloid newspapers in a hotel with a famed topless model, adding more pressure on the show’s producers to end the program.

But the British public’s hunger for artificial-intelligence-themed game shows was too strong, and Robot Wars’ creators set about starting a new show. They came up with Turing Test Challenge.

TTC was first aired in 2006 on BBC2 and proved to be a massive hit, finishing second in the year’s television ratings (being narrowly beaten by the episode of Coronation Street in which everyone dies). The show’s formula is simple: teams create a computer program that they hope is smart enough to engage in typed conversation with a celebrity judge. The judge is also conversing with a second human in another room through a computer, and if they are unable to determine which conversation is with the computer, then the program’s creators have created an artificial intelligence. The team win a holiday to the Seychelles and £2000 in cash.

As with Robot Wars, the first season of the show, released this week on BBC DVD, is the most entertaining, if only for the honourable failures. The pilot episode, originally unaired and shown here for the first time, has Stephen Fry as the judge. The first computer program, written by a pair of teenagers from Bath fails spectacularly to converse with the erudite actor. Later in the episode, however, another team come close to winning the prize when Fry asks the human conversant what he thinks about the breeding techniques of the Southern fulmar.

Really, it is the celebrities who make or break an episode of Turing Test Challenge. While Stephen Fry and Ewan MacGregor both make excellent judges, Mohamed Al-Fayed is terrible, only asking the contestants questions about the Royal Family. Oasis songwriter Noel Gallagher started well in his episode, seeing through all the contestants’ programs until he got frustrated with his task and reverted to typing scores of swear words into his keyboard, confusing both the artificial intelligence and the other human conversant.

The contestants themselves are relatively unremarkable; in some cases the programs made to simulate human language actually have more personality than their creators. The best example of this is Lingua Frank, an AI invented by Desmond Monroe, a professor of economics. Frank did so well in its test that the celebrity judge for that episode, Nigella Lawson, asked him out on a date. Also completely charming was the AI created by six-year-old Matthew from Margate, which answered every question and comment with the word “Why?”. In the end of season awards, this program was deemed ‘Most like a six-year-old’.

Turing Test Challenge is a very good DVD set, and a great gift for anyone who is interested in Artificial Intelligence, robots or nerds. And while the show is reason enough to buy this DVD, the extras are the icing on the cake, with some great out-takes, including the part when the producers have two humans converse with Ewan MacGregor as a joke, and he is convinced that they’re both robots. There’s also a great behind-the-scenes look at the show, hosted by Stephen Fry, who obviously fancies one of the producers.

Turing Test Challenge is out now on BBC DVD, available from all good former video stores and some bad ones too, probably.

This Week’s Cookery Programmes Reviewed

A host of new cookery programmes have recently been airing on various channels, and the Imaginary Review caught a glimpse of several of them at the weekend. Here’s our guide to the forthcoming highlights and low points.

Wednesday sees the third instalment of Delia Phones for a Curry (BBC1, 7.30). Opinion has been divided for the last two episodes; has Delia Smith sold out? Or is she providing a valuable resource for those of us too lazy, stupid or handless to cook a hearty meal every day? This week’s episode is certainly better than the previous two, showing us the best poppadom-to-curry ratio and giving advice on what to do if your order is messed up. The sight of Delia calling the restaurant and requesting that they come back with her Lamb Korma is a wonderful vision of impotent fury.

Delia enjoys the fruit of her labours in Delia Phones for a Curry (BBC1, Wed, 7.30)

Less successful is Gordon Ramsay’s new show. It seems that with all his shouting at chefs and bullying waiters he’s forgotten how to cook. Episode 1 of Gordon Ramsay is Telling You to Cook, So Cook, You Maggot (ITV, Thursday, 10:00), is simply half an hour of the chef staring at the camera and shouting at you, the viewer. Admittedly, the sight of Ramsay telling me to “Get the fuck into the kitchen and beat some bollocking eggs” did make me feel like doing some cooking, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience. At the end of the episode I had made a delicious cake, but I was weeping heavily and felt the need to shower afterwards.

Late Night Nigella (C5, Friday, 11:30) is a similar show to Ramsay’s, but is far more enjoyable. Billed as ‘a cooking show to get men into the kitchen’, the show features Nigella Lawson sat at a dinner table dressed in a negligee and slowly intoning the names of the rudest-sounding foods she can think of. After watching Nigella saying “…melon…smoothies…rump steak…cocktail sausage…” and so on for half an hour made me want to have a shower afterwards, only a cold one.

Finally, Jamie Oliver continues his culinary crusade on BBC2, at 7:00 on Monday. Jamie Fixes the Osmond Family sees the fat-tongued star forcing a family in York to eat lettuce and pasta instead of burgers. Next week, Jamie will be visiting the Morrison Family of Troon, and the following week he’ll be at your house.

Last Night’s Television

Amid the much publicized drop in the show’s ratings, Coronation Street (ITV 8:00) had its first guest director last night, and early indications show that millions tuned in to see what David Lynch would do with the program. I think it’s safe to say that nobody was expecting to see Ken Barlow (William Roache) give birth to a giant, wheezing ball of living glue on Sally Webster’s living room floor, or Tyrone (Alan Halsall) get strangled by Fiz’s own guts in the Rover’s Return. The long-term ramifications don’t just extend to the characters, either. The Underworld Knickers Factory morphed into a grotesquely hellish dungeon-style location, which show insiders suggest may turn out to be the inside of a giant undulating cockroach.
While Lynch’s changes to Coronation Street have managed to grab new viewers, it remains to be seen whether this experiment will keep them. And what the future guest directors (Takeshi Miike, Alan Smithee and Bono being three of those announced) will do with Lynch’s new characters, especially Graham, the telepathic hermaphrodite, I don’t know.

Over on BBC2, The Secret Life of Clowns (9:30) was terrifyingly gripping. While much is known about the public persona of such famous clowns as Bozo, Binko and Pennywise, not a lot is known about the private lives of the less well-known ones. The program makers should be commended for their unflinching look into this seedy and frightening world of orgies, self-mutilation and sin. Watching Quentin, a part-time clown in Epping, travel straight from a child’s birthday party to an underground clown-fetish club was astonishing. Even more impressive was his flawless transition from creating cute balloon animals for the children to doing horrid, horrid things with his balloons, all for the pleasure of the perverts watching in the club. Next week’s show proves to be a real mind-bleach necessity.

Channel Five’s live coverage of the World Ker-Plunk Championships (2:00) would have been terrible, if not for the wonderful commentary by Erwin Frume. The four-time UK Ker-Plunk champion has such enthusiasm for the sport that the way he calls each play makes every dropped marble seem like a grenade down a pipe of kittens. The competitors themselves are far too serious for their own good, and more characters like Norway’s Brian “Strep Throat” Gunderssen would really help to put the sport on the World stage.

DVD Review - Who Wants to Fuck a Goat? - The Entire First Season 8-disc Box Set

When Who Wants to Fuck a Goat? first aired on Channel Five in late October of last year, opinions were divided as the cultural validity of the program. Indeed, a show in which members of the public compete in various challenges for the grand prize of six hours' uninterrupted coitus with a goat doesn't have the hallmarks of great TV, like The Simpsons, May to December or Byker Grove. But for ten weeks, goat fucking was on everybody's lips.

The success of Who Wants to Fuck a Goat? was a surprise even to its creator, Gaviscon Bentley. 'I didn't think we'd get enough people to sign up for the show, to be honest,' he says on the DVD commentary, 'but in the end we had to beat off potential contestants with sticks. Literally. We beat them with sticks. Hard. One lost an eye.'

As the episodes of WWtFaG? unfold, we come to know and love the participants. Dave, the happy-go-lucky cab driver whose dream of fucking a goat is the one thing that keeps him alive during the long, cold, lonely nights; Sharon, who sees goat fucking as a way of getting invited to film premieres; and fan favourite Babted, the diarrhea-plagued mongrel.

'We talked long and hard over whether it was fair to have a dog as a contestant on the show,' opines Bentley in one of the interviews that come as part of the DVD extras package. 'In the end I tossed a coin and threw it at a pigeon. The pigeon died.'

What was it about WWtFaG? that electrified the nation for two and half long months? Was it the blossoming romance between Gavin and Debbie2 (Blonde Debbie)? Was it Sharon's wonderful way with words, spawning a silagetank full of colourful catchphrases? (Do you remember the days before everyone was saying 'What happens at now?' and 'Put the crayons where?'? Me neither!) But whatever made that Goat Fuckery popular, it's all here on an eight-disc goat-shaped special edition boxset.

From Dave slipping in the trail of Babted's wake during the Waiter challenge and getting his hair all pooey to the final triumphant thrusts into the lucky goat's orifices, you can relive all the moments from the show. And there are twenty-six hours of unseen footage, too, including a bit in a car when some of the contestants discuss crisps and six hours of people sleeping in a room. The DVD is jam-packed with goat-fucking extras, like a 'Pin the Goat on the Member' game and twelve hours of interviews with the makers, contestants and Twiggy, the goat himself.

Overall, this DVD gets a three-point star advantage, with heavy lilting for the extras, giving it a grand total of uneven camber.

Who Wants to Fuck a Goat? The DVD box-set is available in time for the Christmas rush, on December 23rd. To buy a copy, simply give some money to a slack-jawed infant in HMV and walk away tutting as his general apathy during the purchasing process causes you to briefly stare at the porn behind the counter.

Television Review

The new sitcom from Ricky Gervais, An Annoying Full-of-Himself Man Gets His Comeuppance With Excruciating but Hilarious Results, is another triumph from the Emmy Award-winning comedian. It marks a new stage in the career of the funnyman, and shows that he is capable of an incredible range of talent.

The Imaginary Review has seen An Annoying Full-of-Himself Man Gets His Comeuppance With Excruciating but Hilarious Results and we can certainly say that it displays a remarkable departure from Gervais's normal output. As with his other comedies, Gervais appears in the main role, but here his character is incredibly different to those from his other shows. Unlike David Brent, who was irritating and arrogant, and the bloke from Extras, who was obnoxious and pompous, his new character is annoying and full of himself. Truly, Ricky Gervais is a man who can pull off any role.

The style of the new comedy is very different from those previously mentioned, too. In it, Ricky's character usually ends up getting his comeuppance, and the results are hilarious. But at the same time, they're also somewhat excruciating. Indeed, one could say that the comeuppance has Excruciating and Hilarious results.

Consider, if you will, the results of Gervais's character's comeuppance in the first episode. At times you - the viewer - will be cringing out of the sheer excruciation of the comeuppance. But you'll be laughing too, as the results of the comeuppance are also hilarious. Gervais has already won the British Comedy Award for actor, sitcom and genius of the year 2008, despite the fact that nobody else has seen the new show. Apparently he will win next year's Emmy for best actor in December, a month before the series begins on television.

Did I mention that his character is Annoying and Full of himself? Brilliant.

The Imaginary Review can't recommend An Annoying Full-of-Himself Man Gets His Comeuppance With Excruciating but Hilarious Results enough. We haven't actually seen the final episode from the series, due to a veil of secrecy from the producers, but we'd bet a tenner to a penny that it's hilarious! (And excruciating. And something to do with a comeuppance.)

An Annoying Full-of-Himself Man Gets His Comeuppance With Excruciating but Hilarious Results will be shown on BBC One after Christmas, shortly after you've been made practically orgasmic with anticipation by a series of idents that make it look different from all his other shows, but which will cause a crushing disappointment not unlike losing your virginity to a spotty premature-ejaculating adolescent at a party, with similar feelings of regret and betrayal.