Mindhunter

Everyone was telling me to watch Mindhunter.  So I watched it and now we’re going to hear all about what I thought of it.  Only it wasn’t as simple as that.  The people in the office that were going on about it were easily ignored.  I’m well known for not really being a listener, so this was within character.  It was, in fact, a chance encounter with the Netflix trailer for season two that really sold me into the show.  I’ve talked before about how navigating the overwhelming choice on Netflix can be daunting, leading to a paralysed state where no real commitment can be made, and you end up spending your whole evening browsing.  Before you know it, you’ve got to get in the bed and set the alarm so you don’t forget to go back to your office for typing emails into a computer the next morning.

But if you hover a show for too long on Netflix, the trailer autoplays.  The alarming eruption of voices has often led me to suspect I am undergoing a home invasion, but I am now used to this and have finally agreed with London Metropolitan Police that we will leave each other alone.  In the case of the Mindhunter trailer, suspenseful music immediately filled my sparsely decorated new build living room.  The screen of my massive telly conveyed a past decade of American life.  All of this was soaked through with a quickly gripping sense of mystery: the story was clearly of a serial killer in late seventies, early eighties Atlanta targeting African-American children while the institutionally racist law enforcement, er, institutions ignored calls for them to investigate.  I’m not normally one for grisly crime investigations, but the added tension of strained race relations promised more intense drama (see post on Dear White People) so this, coupled with some clearly very high production values, saw me dive in.

But what started as a dive turned into a slow, uncomfortable, duty-bound crawl as Mindhunter shifted awkwardly under my expectations of what it would actually be.  Let’s get this out of the way first: the Atlanta murders are only really about 40% of the second series, and to get to that I had to get through the first series, where they are 0% of the content.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying I can now only enjoy things that are to do with the Atlanta child murders, but I want to acknowledge that Netflix’s trailer mis-sold the show.  Nevertheless, I put my thumb-distracting smartphone in a different room and committed to the first few episodes.  But I couldn’t work out where things were going.  We had some FBI people forming an unlikely partnership, going around training local police, but then kind of starting to interview serial killers (before the term had been coined) in prisons and then sort of, you know, getting into running a whole study to understand more about the behaviour of violent criminals.  Mindhunter gets into a great stride, but it takes its time getting there.  This was competing in my TV-viewing time with masterpieces like Seven Worlds, One Planet and I’m A Celebrity (also obviously a masterpiece), so I found it harder and harder to prioritise such heavy-going fare.

After a bit of a gap, though, I found myself on lengthy plane and train journeys during my America trip and, with nothing else to do, was able to focus on subsequent episodes downloaded to my phone, finally hooking myself in to get totally mindhunted.  And that’s the first thing about Mindhunter: its terrible name.  The cast don’t actually go out hunting for minds.  A more apt title would be Crimesolver or Violentoffenderinterviewer, but both of those sound much naffer than Mindhunter.  But where there was a lack of effort in thinking up a title, there is an excess of doing a good job when it comes to most other elements of the production.  The period setting is executed masterfully – parts of it are slightly akin to a latter-day suburban Mad Men, and, like that show, the attitudes of the time are held true, rather than filtering history’s bigotry through a more palatable lens to make modern audiences feel good (I’m looking at you, Downton Abbey).  People smoke constantly, there is little to no airport security, and seatbelts look distinctly optional – ah, the good old days.

Let’s meet, then, the chap who I think is the actual Mindhunter: Holden Ford.  He’s played by Jonathan Groff and he speaks with the same pitch of voice at all times, which makes his lines hypnotic, but brings to life Ford’s untapped genius as he begins to realise the scope of what his work can achieve: if they learn to profile killers, they can solve murders before further victims fall.  The grumpy cop to his wide-eyed cop is Bill Tench and what unites them is they both have really bad shirts.  Our pair are joined by Dr Wendy Carr who seems to perform the role of some sort of line manager stroke unenthusiastic office-bound cheerleader, sending her chaps out to record interviews she can listen to.  All three are drawing on their experiences at a certain school of acting in their performances: the “I just smelled a fart” approach.  Indeed, each actor’s talent shines through as they create their characters, but the distasteful and serious nature of their conversations and relationships make it look like someone has just keffed in their airspace the whole time.  This extends to almost all the supporting cast, with the exception of the serial killers they meet in various jails.  There are some real household names that I won’t spoil, but you can tell each performer is having a smashing time in the role.

As we progress into series two, a lot starts to go on.  Story strands spread outwards like planets in an ever-expanding universe.  While everything that unfolds about the Atlanta child murders is compelling, we’re also getting deep into Tench’s own problems with his adopted son and very curly-haired wife (with in-marriage dialogue that perfectly captures how things can get so much worse when you only say the wrong thing to each other).  In addition, Carr’s relationship goes under the microscope in order to allow us a better understanding of her mode of operation (which is refreshingly unusual).  Mindhunter treats its viewers intelligently, allowing real focus on each area rather than jumping about like a dance video.  The whole pace can tend to luxuriate in its own quality, as if demanding we drink in the awesome settings, the American nostalgia and the faces of cast members who look like they’re trying to work out who just did that terrible fart.

Season two has left me wanting more and a new TV-viewing approach has evolved to keep up with historical references.  It’s called the Google-along and it’s something you might already have found yourself doing with The Crown.  Each time something comes up that you’ve never heard of, call upon your search engine of choice to cover the gaps in your historical context.  But don’t forget to look at the TV screen too, otherwise you’ll miss this unusual show as it defies your categorisations and expectations.  Focus on the mindhunting.

Friday Night Lights

In life, it’s important to have goals.  I’ve only set very few over the years so I can focus on each in turn.  The first was to go to Oxford – something I decided at the age of about eight apparently.  Once that was achieved (it was expensive, and they still email me asking for money that I am never going to give them), the next was to become a published writer.  Still haven’t managed that, but I think one out of two in my 34 years is a pretty decent strike weight.  A completion rate of 50% is better than 0%.  So, while number two eludes me, other interim goals crop up.  One was to buy a flat, and that dominated the last ten years before this summer’s eventual Help To Buy transaction, and another was to watch all five series of Friday Night Lights.  And now, everybody, I have finally delivered that goal.  So let’s all read my blogpost about it.

First things first, I should declare my lifelong aversion to team ball sports.  I grew up in a household where football wasn’t a thing.  My dad’s only sporting interest involved filling our home with the bone-chilling screech of Formula 1 tires and Murray Walker’s whiny exclamations every Sunday, with many a roast dinner soundtracked by what became two of my least favourite sounds.  With nobody realising I was short-sighted till my teens and my appalling hypermobility-linked proprioception, taking part in any sort of PE involved me not only being unable to see any balls that were launched at me, but also an inability to position my limbs to intercept them successfully.  My adult life therefore is an extension of my childhood home: sport is not a thing.  I save hours every night by not having to watch soccer matches, and I replace the office chat I see pursued around me about whose team beat whose and which players will lift what cups by having an actual personality.  However, I love dramas about sport.  It’s a theme for good narrative tension, like zombies (see The Walking Dead) and prisons (see Prison Break).  Let’s be honest, I’ve written fondly about Footballers’ Wives, and probably repeated most of those points here, so Friday Night Lights falls into that category.

The show is based on a book that had already become a film.  I’d loved the film, so I remember adding the first series to my Lovefilm list back in the dark ages when DVDs were sent back and forth in the post.  I got through the first two series and then, pow, I couldn’t for the life of me get hold of the subsequent instalments up to and including the final fifth season.  This caused years of discontent, as everything about the show was brilliant and I was desperate to see what happened to the characters I so dearly loved.  The later series were available on a friend’s Amazon Prime account, but you had to pay for each one.  As a Millennial, paying for content is a cause of great internal conflict, so I kept my pennies and my anxieties about what becomes of the Dillon Panthers football team.  Finding out became a lifelong ambition.  But, with the new flat came the decision to get my own Amazon Prime and by this point all series were included in the monthly subscription.  I could finally complete my task and achieve my goal.  And the outcome?  This amazing piece of writing for all seven of my regular readers.

Let’s cover what the show’s all about.  We are talking American football here.  Set in the state of Texas, where this sport is a religion, the end-of-week evening illuminations in the show’s title refer to the significance of high school football matches in small-town America.  I’ve only been to Austin in Texas, so this is sadly not something I’ve experienced first-hand, but this can go on the list of lifelong goals now.  Our heroes are Coach Eric Taylor (the cracking Kyle Chandler) and his wife Tami Taylor (the equally cracking Connie Britton) – these wonderful characters are the heart of our show.  I might be in my mid-thirties, but I am available for adoption to these two.  With the whole town holding its breath for football wins each Friday, the sporting fixtures in their own right generate gripping drama.  But this is then compounded by the human stories around the sport, from the ever-evolving dynamic between Coach and Tami, to the players, their families and their friends.  The whole town of Dillon feels tangibly brought to life.

A word of warning: the whole thing is filmed in wobbly cam.  It’s as if the camera operator was trying to bat away flies throughout each shoot.  This gives an intimacy to the portrayals which is heightened by the quality of the performances throughout.  The show launched the careers of Taylor Kitsch and Michael B. Jordan, but you’ll recognise faces from an array of your favourite US dramas.  I’m going to focus on some of the peripheral characters whose actors’ names never make the emotive opening credits but whose work lifts the whole thing.  There’s Brad Leland as Buddy Garrity, a role that initially irritates before elevating itself to favourite position.  I also finished the show with a deep appreciation of Stacey Oristano as Mindy Collette.  There are too many more to mention, but the quality is consistent.  Sadly, one other element of consistency is the Taylors’ daughter, Julie.  She is annoying and stupid throughout.

On my part, I’ve also maintained the consistent approach of never understanding the rules of American football.  So much of the drama can hinge around things like who is the quarterback or how many yards are left, but not knowing what these really mean is no barrier to the show’s power.  Most remarkably of all, though, is each season’s ability to build on the previous while still finding a fresh direction.  Somehow, over the years, I ended up watching the third series twice, but it’s the perfect shift between the very different dynamics (which I won’t actually describe here as that would be giving spoilers) of the beginning and end of the programme’s lifespan.  I do remember thinking the finale to the third season was the whitest thing I had ever seen (and I grew up in semirural Surrey), but the subsequent series shift in focus to reflect and include a more holistic view of American culture.  And then, either way, your heart breaks as everything draws to a close and your life must continue without any news episodes.

So I’ll chalk up Friday Night Lights as another chapter in my love affair with America.  I’m even writing this from a Chinatown hotel room in New York, wondering why the US hasn’t got the memo about waste as plastic bags are given out freely here still and the entire hotel breakfast was an exercise in plastic landfill generation (disposable crockery and cutlery…).  But I’ll also chalk it up as an exemplary contribution to the canon of quality boxsets.  Intense drama, plausible characters, a subject matter that isn’t overdone and, even though I’m conflicted about this as I wanted more, it ends before it runs out of steam.  No matter the day of the week or the time of the day, I cannot recommend Friday Night Lights enough.

Misfits

I’ve never really bought superheroes.  People wang on about the latest addition to the interminable Marvel Character Universe and I seem to zone out immediately.  What we can bear to watch comes down to what we can buy as a reality in which a story can play out.  My own mother can’t abide anything supernatural as it’s simply not realistic enough.  As a result, she cheerfully refuses to engage with the entire wizarding world of Harry Potter.  Sometimes I can’t work out why I’ll buy the things I’ll buy and reject the others.  Zombies?  Count me in no matter what (The Walking Dead and Kingdom).  Vampires?  Excuse me while I reminisce about loving True Blood.  I even sat through every season of Lost, long after I’d lost all hope of ever working out what I was actually buying.  But, typically, I’ll reject anything to do with costumed heroes.  So why, then, am I covering Misfits this week?

Well the truth is that I am behind with my boxset consumption and haven’t polished off anything new in a while.  But my viewing experience’s loss is your blog-reading pleasure’s gain, as I know we all love to trawl the archives.  I’ve cast my mind back to a show that did in fact deal with the real-life consequences of developing superpowers: Misfits.  The premise was not only a great excuse for orange jumpsuits, but also a sure-fire way to ponder the age-old question of just how much great power comes with which sort of great responsibility.  The premise was thus: some pesky youths on community service get caught up in a mysterious storm.  Superhuman new abilities ensue, with our drama served up by two sources: our characters coming to terms with their new faculties and the same characters coming across other individuals who enhanced their natural gifts in the storm’s rage.

Whenever I think what power I would have if I were a superhero, I always arrive at the conclusion that I can’t be improved.  I’ve occasionally thought it would be nice to be a bit taller, but I don’t think Slightly Taller Man would be a welcome addition to the Avengers when they’re next doing some of their assembling.  But don’t worry, the kids in Misfits got a good helping of powers each.  My favourite, regardless of power, was Kelly played by Lauren Socha.  At one point she was all over TV and I can’t fathom why this hasn’t continued.  Her voice had a quality to me that was pure entertainment and I just wanted her to say every line.  I’d have taken Misfits as a one-woman show if I’m honest.  Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Curtis) appeared in a few things afterward, based on the strong vest-wearing he did in the show.  He once came to a party I was forced to attend as part of a work campaign (Primal Scream were playing but I just wanted to go home as I had no idea who they were) and I saw him in our VIP area.  “Yeah,” I thought, “there’s that man off the telly.”  Robert Sheehan provided impish charm with a hearty overegging of every scene as the very annoying Nathan.  He later appeared in Fortitude, which remains my least read blog (so click on it), and showed quite a different side to himself (and his private parts).  On the whole, though, everyone did a fantastic job in their parts.  Well done.  But some of those jobs got so over the top that I didn’t stick with things all the way to 2013’s fifth series.  It was the arrival of Rudy, played by Joseph Gilgun, in season three that started to wear me out.  I don’t like it when actors’ enjoyment of their own performances visibly outweighs the believability of their own performance.  You don’t see me at my office desk having a great time.

What made things really work was the gritty British urban setting of the whole thing.  Concrete wasteland is somehow a very plausible place for some inclement weather to dish out superhuman abilities.  But the greatest element of its own realism came from Misfits’ use of irreverent humour.  Sure coping with time-rewinding power and telepathy was deep stuff, but it also led to some LOLs.  This is why traditional hero fare always loses me.  At some point, our protagonist dons some sort of skin-tight outfit and begins posturing about the place as if we can take them seriously now they’ve got a uniform and a generic moniker that indicates their power.  I always think of Bananaman.  And I always hated him for being patronising.  The Misfits’ powers were buyable - probably just manifestations of the things we have about ourselves that make us think we are different to everyone.  I’ll confess here to my own hero creation: Bubble Boy.  Don’t worry; I didn’t think of the name.  My niece came up with that.  As an adult, imagination play is incredibly embarrassing.  I can spend hours building LEGO or playing board games with my sister’s daughter, but anything involving pretending goes beyond my comfort zone.  I was obliged to spend half the summer in the garden with her enacting superhero battles.  She was something to do with a ladybird.  Each battle starts with your pose.  It can be holding aloft a weapon or assuming some sort of proactive position.  Bubble Boy, whose name isn’t actually linked to any of my own digestive problems, draws a bubble with his hands.  Because, yes, he has the awesome power of bubbles.  Be afraid.  Don’t worry, I don’t proceed to assault a ten-year-old girl, as we are normally too busy laughing at our own posing to unleash any real violence.  Which just goes to show we British can’t take anything seriously.  I mean, just look at Brexit.

But if you want silly camp costumes, then Strictly Come Dancing is on every year.  Otherwise, dig out the old Misfits boxset for a masterclass in good British telly.  Nobody stands on a rooftop in Lycra with their hands on their hips.  They scowl while wearing dirty jumpsuits, before making some sort of quip about the whole situation.  The next time you see some disaffected youths, don’t forget that they might just have some superpowers you just don’t know about.

Shipwrecked

This is a battle between two shows.  The first was a Sunday morning staple from the very earliest days of reality TV, which, when looked back on from 2019, is imbued with youthful nostalgia and innocence.  The second is a reboot of the format after nearly a decade’s hiatus.  The cynic in me wonders if this return is a response to the discovery by ITV2 of the formula for 16-34 TV gold: beautiful young people minus clothing plus sunny island equals captive audience (that would otherwise be on Instagram and not watching telly).  Yes, I was talking about Love Island just then everybody, but this post is about Shipwrecked in all of its guises, on T4, e4 and Channel 4, and with and without its suffix: colon Battle Of The Islands.

Cast your minds back.  It’s nearly the Millennium (which I still think of as the Minnellium, as the word better encapsulates the absolute naffness of this pointless event) and we children have been brought by our mother to Devon for a party with old family friends.  I remember two things: my sister’s guinea pig died while we were away, continuing our pets’ tradition of snuffing it on special occasions, and I laughed so hard during a game of cards that I farted loudly in front of my parents’ grown-up friends.  But, at the same time, months before Big Brother, Shipwrecked came to our screens.  Those first series, one running in 2000 and two (yes, two!) following in 2001, were from a more naïve era.  There was no competition.  This was simply a documentary crew following young people living a back-to-basics existence while receiving permanent skin damage in the sun of the South Pacific.  Animals were slaughtered, people got sand in their cracks, and dramas ensued about kissing boys and raising gay community flags.  But this wasn’t 24-hour surveillance; a film crew chased the islanders among the palms, waving a boom and clutching cameras, so we never knew how much was reality and how much was showing off.  Rumours later abounded that the juiciest action never made it to air: an island strewn with condom wrappers was the only physical evidence of how the crew and the cast inevitably succumbed to the holiday combination of heat, scantily cladness and being away.

Five years later, the format returned, only this time there were two islands.  And they were at war.  Adding some spice and jeopardy, new arrivals would appear each week, spending time with rival tribes before ultimately picking their permanent home.  The most populous tribe would nab some prize money, which, once divided twenty-five ways, was probably just enough to cover the psychological counselling anyone would need after spending weeks in a tropical paradise and then having to return to the UK.  As a sixth former, this was religious viewing.  You needed to be able to enter the common room debate about whether you’d rather be a Tiger or a Shark.  I honestly can’t remember which of the two was the tribe for me, but I do know it was the same animal each series.  T4, a curious youth strand on Channel 4, had cornered the market in weekend morning hangover TV, and we, graduating from being Inbetweeners, were more or less legally allowed to drink alcohol.  Every weekend was filled with eighteenth birthday parties and all the Smirnoff Ices you could drink.  Shipwrecked: Battle Of The Islands was perfect viewing.

I would go into more detail on what occurred in these episodes between 2006 and 2009, but this period, at least in terms of the internet, is a very long way away.  How we’re able to excavate ancient ruins and carbon-date millennia-old fossils, yet I can’t find a non-pixellated image of the 2008 cast is beyond me.  I do recall, though, that at some point, the scheduling shifted from weekend mornings to weekday evenings.  More specifically, Tuesdays.  In this age before reliable catch up and when your dad still controlled the VCR, I was devastated.  On Tuesday nights I pushed trolleys around the car park of Waitrose in Cobham.  I still therefore miss the series I never saw, despite the generous wages and benefits of the John Lewis Partnership.  Instead, I have memories of dodging the BMWs and Audis while fetching back the abandoned shopping carts, refusing to wear the high-vis jacket even when it snowed as it stunk of someone else’s BO, overhearing mums telling their children to work hard at school so they didn’t end up like me (despite me having a place at Oxford) until I finally got moved indoors.  Ramming twelve trolleys into the back of a Mercedes might have been part of it (the driver was still inside).

One series I was able to enjoy fully was the 2008 season.  This was when I started my job in media.  It was July 2008.  I had misspent a year in a headhunting firm where people were very serious, discussing the economy or rugby or braying about their children.  I had got in constant trouble so I was determined to keep a low profile in this new role.  I would resist piping up in all office discussions until I had proven I was good at my job.  But then, I overheard new colleagues (who are still beloved to this day) talking about the previous night’s episode of Shipwrecked.  It took all my willpower (and there’s not much) to resist wheeling over there in my desk chair and joining in.  But what it did prove was that I had come to the right place.

And now, it’s back.  This time, we’re broadcasting at 9pm each weeknight on e4, so we can have as much swearing and boobies as we like.  Sadly missing is Morcheeba’s The Sea, a track I will forever associate with Shipwrecked.  We have a new narrator.  Gone are Andrew Lincoln and Craig Kelly, both of whom sounded bored out of their minds while describing the antics of attention-seeking twentysomethings.  Vick Hope gently pokes fun at the characters, but mostly gets on with it, which somehow leaves me craving the acid-tongued lashings of Love Island’s Iain Stirling.  But much is the same.  Even Aygo by Toyota (the old sponsor of T4) is back on board (shout out to the friend who did this deal).  We have Sharks and we have Tigers.  The ante is upped though, as the new arrivals, who have so far in this first week come in pairs, also have to be picked by the island they choose, with a mismatch resulting in a one-way ticket back to Blighty.  This has brought high tension and just desserts, though I have just watched the fifth episode, where the complication of having a pair of identical twins as the arrivals made the format seem slightly cruel.  Having gone through secondary education with five twins in my form of thirty (and a further two pairs in the year group – clearly something in the water in Horsley) my twindar felt quite sensitive to the onslaught.

Sadly I’m not yet watching this on a massive f***-off telly in my own home.  I can pick between the non-HD live broadcast where I’m overwhelmed by adverts, or catch up on All4, where I’m overwhelmed by adverts.  Both scenarios also include the inhabitants of the flat upstairs, divided from ours by a ceiling made presumably of hopes and dreams, stomping about constantly, so if I’m not distracted by the heel-walking of the morbidly obese, I’m squinting at the low-def picture, filling in the gaps with my imagination.  This year, the Sharks are a lovely bunch, while the Tigers have a nastier streak.  I’m therefore definitely a Tiger, as that sort of person is always more interesting.

Is it as good as we remember?  Well, after some acclimatisation, this could be a vintage year.  Times have changed, and it’s hard to work out if this is a dating show or a survivalist documentary.  In addition, I’m now ten years older than most of the contestants, rather than them seeming like inhabitants of a distant future adulthood that was years away.  I can’t help but wonder if it would be rewarding if the cast had greater maturity and life experience.  Maybe I could bowl up: hi, I’m Rob; I’m 33 and work in advertising; I enjoy too much telly and going to bed early.  Maybe not.  It’s just that these young people seem to shriek so much.  There’s a boat: cue screaming.  There’s a palm tree: cue caterwauling.  There’s a pontoon: cue sh*t being lost.  Then a friend articulated my reservation perfectly: this is hangover TV, but we don’t have hangovers.

Come Dine With Me

I’m on the cusp of being able to buy my first ever home.  This doesn’t mean I have been squatting in a crisp packet this whole time, but that I have spent the last 11 years renting and sharing (and huge apologies to all former and current flatmates; I really am dreadful).  I’m around 18 months behind on my own personal life schedule with this purchase (let’s blame Brexit) but the fact that it’s so close is half-terrifying, half-spectacular.  I even found myself looking at massive tellies in John Lewis today, even though my parents have saved me one from a dead neighbour and are keeping it under their bed for me (the telly, not the neighbour).  As a future home owner, what I plan to do, and what I have never really done in any of my rentals, is to have friends round for dinner.  I have a list of all the dear chums I need to pay back for the hospitality: all their wine I’ve drunk, all their main courses I’ve not really chewed but swallowed down like a gannet due to hunger and hanger mismanagement, all the puddings I’ve spooned in my face because excess fat and sugar don’t count if you’re in someone else’s house and have already surpassed your recommended daily allowance of alcohol units.  I’m not going to be held back by the fact I can only really make a few things and have little to no interest in how food tastes most of the time.  I just hope they all like porridge.  I do.

Anyway, this has led me to consider Come Dine With Me for this week’s self-absorbed few hundred words that I’m hoping some people will want to read.  It’s a show that’s about having people round to dinner as a competitive sport.  And please note, these aren’t friends you’re having round, these are strangers that the casting team have decided will make good telly.  Each guest scores their host, before the tables turn on the following night.  Once everyone has had a chance to arrange Parma ham on slices of melon and to slag off each other’s desserts for being too sweet, the highest-scoring contestant is revealed and richly rewarded with a wad of cash and some intensely petty envy.  TV gold, I’m sure you’ll agree.  In the UK, ITV Studios produce this show for Channel 4, which is a fun fact for your next dinner party (you’re welcome).  It’s also, the last time I checked, the most syndicated TV format in the world, currently showing in, I don’t know, a million territories or something.

But now that the serious journalism bit is out the way, let me tell you what things I like about the show the most:

The terrible characters

You need an array of personality defects to want to be on this programme.  There are the obvious ones, such as over-confidence in your cooking abilities, a strong conviction that your approach to hosting is world class and a compulsive need to be the centre of attention.  But this is where the genius of the casting comes in.  That annoying loudmouth in your office whose voice you can’t block out?  They’d be in.  The person in your family that seems to create awkwardness every Christmas?  Them too.  That schoolfriend who’s always showing off about their unorthodox lifestyle choices?  Of course.  Oh wait, I’m just describing myself now.

The irreverent voiceover

I believe strongly that irreverence is the best way to treat most things (though this does mean I have lost the ability to know if I am being sarcastic or not, which is challenging).  The narrator of Come Dine With Me takes this to another level, though, as he clearly thinks that every contestant is an absolute bellend.  It’s probably what inspired the mickey-taking of Love Island’s voiceover, and we all know what joy that brings us.  The hosting contestants often genuinely believe they are culinarily gifted food professionals, so when they talk us through their pedestrian recipes, they are ripe for ribbing.  The guest contestants behave like seasoned restaurant critics, often directly to their hosts’ faces, so it’s a gratifying shared joke for us viewers to hear the voiceover take them down a peg or two.  I can guarantee you laughing out loud here.

People’s awful homes

When you watch a cookery programme normally, things take place in some sort of deliciously artisanal kitchen with rustic herbs a-dangling and distressed work surfaces a-glistening and clutter-free.  But if you delve inside the actual average British kitchen, it’s a bad-taste buffet of mismatching cutlery, damp patches and novelty teacups hanging limply from mug-trees.  Behind closed doors, that dodgy chopping board or the limescale visible on the side of your kettle are just part of what makes it a normal home.  But on camera, it always looks like the site of a natural disaster.  You expect to hear Michael Buerk asking you to give just £5 a month so these people can afford some decent kitchenware.  But then I don’t know if the people that already have quite nice stuff are actually worse, because they seem to have no taste in the first place.  They arrange rocket salads on square plates, or use wine glasses the size of church fonts, or have blingy knives and forks.

I didn’t mean to slag it all off so much, as it does make for wonderful entertainment.  Being rooted in reality, however, does take away any aspirational edge (for most people – for me, having friends to dinner is still only an aspiration).  Therefore, watching it, despite the titters, can end up accompanied by the suspicion you could be doing something better with your time.  Episodes either last an hour and cover a group of four contestants with each dinner party in a fifteen-minute segment, or you can get strips of five episodes, where each lasts half an hour and covers a different event, with more focus on the prep.  The latter has a curious habit of drawing you in for, quite literally, just one more episode, if you ever stumble across it on More4 of a Sunday afternoon.  We’re running out of time to mention the celebrity specials, the fact that contestants also snoop around each other’s homes, or the story that some colleagues once recreated the format in real life, which involved one of them getting up repeatedly throughout the night to moisten their pulled pork, and still not winning.  My final nugget though, which I once read on a trashy website, is that each episode takes hours to film, what with all the pieces to camera, so the hosts end up serving desserts at 3am and the guests end up sloshed off their faces.  Maybe this explains some of the behaviour.

Once in a while, then, it’s ok to treat yourself (in the style of Parks & Recreation) and wallow on your sofa, scoffing at these real people, their homes, their food and their manners, safe in the knowledge they can’t see you, where you live, what you eat, or how you treat your guests.