TV execs think viewers want to immerse themselves in the lives of boring celebs, people with any sort of job, and outright weirdos. Here are some you could definitely live without.
At Home with the Furys
Ever wondered what it’s like to live in a house, or have a partner, or own a sofa? Prepare to have your mind blown. Watch as Tyson does precisely what you’d expect a retired boxer to do: go on holiday, return to the ring for lucrative novelty fights, and have the odd disagreement with his wife. At one point he claims his family are ‘all frigging crazy’. They’re not. Netflix should ask for their money back.
Keeping up with the Kardashians
This hinges on you being fascinated by Kim, Khloe, Kylie, Kryptonfactor and Khlamidia or whatever. If you’re not it’s really no different to watching the boring day-to-day activities of a marketing agency. Yes, they have arguments, but who knows what’s real? Your partner could call you a ‘rat-faced paedo nonce with shit hair’ every day for the rest of your life and it’d be well worth it for $1.7 billion.
Airport
A show where delayed flights and checking suitcases were treated as high drama. There were never any thrilling drugs busts because drug smuggling is basically hiding things in bags, not Tony Montana smearing Jeremy Spake across Heathrow Terminal 4 with a frag grenade. It was always sold on its ‘behind the scenes’ appeal. Why? You don’t care what goes on ‘behind the scenes’ of a tyre factory.
Made in Chelsea
If you got a pound every time Binky, Millie, Jamie et al discussed some incredibly minor relationship problem, you could buy Chelsea and bulldoze it to the f**king ground. Reality TV stars can make serious money, and considering this lot were all pretty rich anyway it was slightly sickening to realise they were coining it in from peasants like you. Still, at least you were only watching the dreary show, not working 18 hours a day in a field for their feudal lord ancestors.
Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole
Incorrectly categorised on the Channel 5 website as ‘entertainment’, Benefits Britain had a habit of zeroing in on the most troubled individuals in the UK. The benefits were kind of irrelevant – the most hopeless cases needed constant supervision, because spending a housing benefit cheque on bingo was just the sort of stupid shit they did. Also, it’s hard to enjoy watching a house so filthy it makes you want a bath after seeing it on TV, never mind going there in person.
Little Lady Fauntleroy
On paper Lauren (formerly James) Harries sounds like an ideal subject for a lighthearted documentary. She was the precocious child antiques expert on Wogan, but her adult life was quickly revealed to be a massive, miserable, pathetic lie. She and her mother were eking a living with bogus counselling and metaphysics degrees, including ones issued by ‘the Cardiff College of Humanistic Studies’ – their own house. A classic of the genre of elevating someone so unusual they shed light on nothing except their own strangeness, not helped by the choice of presenter, the ever-humble and sympathetic Keith Allen.
Tiger King
Not hugely relatable due to everyone in it being mental. The only compelling question was how a zookeeper (loosely defined) hadn’t realised a 500lb carnivore would quickly work out you’re made of meat. Really the main appeal was seeing if someone would get mauled, and the Guardian’s wanky obsession with ‘must-see watercooler TV’ would have ended pretty abruptly if we’d seen Joe get his ribcage ripped open.
