THE fight is over. They have colonized the entire planet.
From pole to pole, coast to coast and back, via the A12’s old Army and Navy roundabout, Portillo, Toksvig, Calman, McDonald and the rest have claimed every square inch of it on behalf of minor celebrities and their miserable travelogues.
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TV decided we love these shows too, so they run them on an endless know-it-all loop, admonishing you for the places you haven’t been and telling viewers that they’re having a far better time because of it in the places you’ve been The presenter had a TV station that footed the bill and catered to all C-list requests.
Obviously I don’t like any of those famous freeloaders.
However, with Richard Ayoade (plus another silly comedian) grinning for another 48 hours strolling through some third world hellhole, my current bogeyman is a series called ‘A Wright Family Holiday’, on BBC1 of all places UK-based ITV rip-off Breaking Dad series.
Open nonsense
That means alongside Towie’s Mark and his brother Josh, who never tires of reminding us he’s “a professional footballer” without making it clear he plays for Ebbsfleet United, we’ve also teased Mark senior, who persuades and almost being pushed into getting off planes and bridges and other adrenaline-pumping activities that the poor old chap obviously doesn’t feel like doing.
However, there is a very important difference here.
While Bradley Walsh is immediately likeable and funny, the Wright boys have a distinct aura of the Mitchell brothers’ menace and a sense of humor that, from the moment Mark introduces himself as a “mature 35-year-old man,” “Way one” is. then farts.
Following this opening babble, something of a pattern emerges.
Mark Snr weaves his way through the Peak District saying, “Take it all in, look around, breathe the air,” then Mark farts.
At the hang gliding center near the beautiful River Derwent, Mark says, “I’ll sum up what I think about this,” and then farts.
And on a drive to Lincolnshire, Josh farts just to break the pattern and monotony of each other’s company.
Of course, the boys get a lot of laughs every time.
This entry-level “Bantz” has the bravado of an Essex lad, however, as it quickly becomes apparent that Mark is a gigantic wimp and has the same screeching reaction to almost any activity. “My legs are shaking. . . and I’m not kidding.”
“I could cry . . . and I’m not kidding.”
“I think I have the Loch Ness Monster. . . and I’m not kidding.”
However, if you somehow imagine that in the midst of all this bragging, crying and farting, the BBC has magically created the sequel to Kenneth Clark’s ‘Civilisation’, perhaps now is the right time for me to live up to your expectations.
That’s not the case.
All three are so completely absorbed in themselves and the wider Wright “faaaahm-lee” that they lose everything else, including the unparalleled majesty of Loch Lomond, which piqued Josh’s interest just enough to ask, “How about come to Scotland with the prospects you have?”
“Yes,” his father replied, barely looking up. “Very mountainous, something like evil and mountains.”
Words so moving, maybe one day I’ll have them tattooed right on my back, under a Lion Rampant flag.
However, the highlight of the whole tour was probably the moment a dime dropped on the final leg in Cornwall.
“This might sound stupid,” Mark Jr. said, putting me on high alert. “But it never occurred to me that Cornish pasties come from Cornwall.”
So you’re wondering if Mark now thinks there’s another county just over the next headland called Steak-andale, or if he’ll spend the next series trying to find the town of Rarebit on his Welsh satnav.
Most of all, one wonders why this fun was paid for by BBC1, who instinctively knew exactly what to do with talented working-class boys like Morecambe & Wise and Brucie.
But now? The Beeb obviously loathe and distrust this entire demographic so much that they don’t even know what to do with untalented working class boys like the Wrights other than getting them to follow in everyone else’s footsteps and discussing their very real problems with the mental health to bitch problems and blah blah blah.
Still, “A Wright Family Holiday” served its purpose, if we judge it by these words: “Dad has morphed into someone who just wants to sit on the sofa and watch TV,” according to Mark’s opening mission statement. I hope that we will change all that.”
Click. job done . . . and I’m not kidding.
- PS: On to my own “emotional journey” to Norway. The column will appear on June 30th.
COMPLETELY MONTY WOKERY
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FOR the sake of jaded virtue, Disney+ has replaced the soul and sense of humor of The Full Monty with a list of leftist obsessions, turning it into eight episodes of Waterloo Bloody Road.
I’d say it also reminds me of the late period Last Of The Summer Wine, but some people might take that as a compliment and it doesn’t deserve one.
Disney’s version is a travesty, a mess, a shameful desecration of a popular film in which the only recognizable elements are Sheffield and the original cast, including Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy and Hugo Speer, who disappeared mid-production after being vigorously denied #MeToo reasons.
However, it cannot be said that it affected the rhythm as the series has neither rhythm nor plot.
It is merely a series of blatant political gestures, reaching a tipping point with the arrival of Kurdish asylum seekers, who seem to serve only to show us the fallacy of our heartless British ways.
Of course, serious lectures on the class struggle by rich TV people are always annoying. But about the $171 billion Disney organization, with its past involvement in Third World sweatshops?
In its own stupid, somberly hypocritical way, that’s something the TV series The Full Monty never managed to do. Fun.
- AND Wednesday’s Springwatch featured “the oldest Chough in Wales,” a bird not to be confused with the “oldest Welsh Chough” owned by Bonnie Tyler.
TV quiz
On last Thursday’s Springwatch episode in Porthdinllaen, North Wales, presenter Gillian displayed a life-size model of what “bottom predator that is caught occasionally but hasn’t been caught since last year”?
A) The angel shark?
B) Conservative MP for Tamworth, Chris Pincher?
Great sporting insights
ROBBIE SAVAGE: “They’ll be dancing off the rooftops of Manchester.”
Dion Dublin: “Even though he meant it, I’m not sure he meant it.”
James Collins: “This West Ham win is unreal, it is unreal. It’s a real experience.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
TV GOLD
BBC2’s North Korea: The Insiders, which should have been given a full hour.
Michael Sheen stands out with Sharon Horgan in BBC1’s typically abysmal series Best Interests.
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Lee Mack turns his attention to an Anne Robinson look-alike who claims to be a former art school teacher: “Sorry, I can’t hear you properly. You used to host The Weakest Link?”
And the grossly underrated intros to The Chase, which are so good I can almost guarantee some funny sponge will be trying to ban them anytime soon.
“Could it be the governess? If she were Dracula’s bride, he would be vegan.”
Doppelganger of the week
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Chris Packham observed a nightjar eating his own noisy chick alive on Springwatch last week: “We called all the experts, interviewed people who know about nightjars and looked through the scientific literature, but we were able to find no incident.” of an adult female eating her own young.
“What the hell could be happening here? We all have our own theories…”
And mine is called the Chloe Madeley Effect.
It just gets too annoying.
Big lies and delusions
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Extraordinary Escapes, Sandi Toksvig: “Escape from the ordinary with five glorious, talented ladies, each one of them a queen of comedy.”
Africa Rising, Afua Hirsch: “I’m from West Africa.” (Wimbledon.)
Love Island, Sammy: “Without sounding shitty, when a girl is yummy it gets tough.” He said, sounding like a sh***k.
Random irritations on TV
THE grim, inevitable way the Love Island girls pounce on Tyrique and Zachariah, the two obviously most awkward boys.
Disney+ is ruining my fond memories of The Full Monty.
BBC2’s High Priestess of Wokery, Afua Hirsch, cuts and pastes all her views of English schoolgirls on an entire continent: Africa Rising.
And Soccer Aid fails to establish a basic level of quality control for the likes of Tommy Fury, who also plays soccer, just as Sandy, the Supervet’s three-legged dog, performs The Nutcracker’s Sugar Plum Fairy Dance in a tutu. Very very bad.
let it stop
Unexpected jerks in the bottling area
TIPPING Point, Ben Shephard: “Oscar winner Rachel Weisz married which James Bond star in 2011?”
Jordan: “Piers Morgan.” (No time to diet.)
Ben Shephard: “What color is the name of a British political party?”
Margaret: “Work.” Ben Shephard: “What great war in Asia began in 1950 and ended in a truce in 1953?” Ashnique: “World War II.”
Ben Shephard: “Which former X Factor star joined the coaching panel for The Voice UK’s 2018 series?”
Kevin: “Molly Urs.”
Fuck it all.