THAT WAS THE BOX – April 2015 (Week Four) | TV Reviews

 

‘PLUS SIZED WARS‘ (CHANNEL 4 – 4OD)
 

As a lady of more generous proportions, I found this programme an interesting prospect. Unfortunately it wasn’t concentrating on oldies like me, but rather the sixty percent of teenage girls in the UK who are now classed as overweight. Plus Sized clothes are the latest ‘thing’ and a plethora of retailers are clambering over themselves to cater to this lucrative market. Just as in the ‘normal’ fashion world, young, female bloggers are the people who are shaping what is worn by those girls who are a size sixteen and over. Their pin-up girl is a plus size model called Tess Holiday, who has the sort of face which would be beautiful if she was a size four or a size twenty-four. Unfortunately, some of the girls who are her fans are not quite so blessed, and in emulating her colourful, burlesque type style, they end up looking rather silly. But hey, what eighteen year old has got fashion sense?
 

Tess came over from America and has been snapped up by mainstream modelling agency Milk, whose previous idea of ‘plus-sized’ has been a size fourteen. At size twenty-four, Tess is the largest model to be signed to a regular agency.
 

The show came just as Jamelia ranted on ‘Loose Women‘ how shops should not stock outsize clothes because it encourages unhealthy lifestyles. I take about as much notice of Jamelia as I do Katie Hopkins, but in a sort of round about way I see where she is coming from. While there is nothing wrong with being generously built, it does worry me that retailers aiming for the 16-25 market are making clothes that are largely unsuitable for such young women, and we live in such a fat shaming world that it is opening people up to ridicule. In an ideal world, a woman would be able to wear whatever she likes, without anyone commenting, but we don’t live in an ideal world. A lot of the girls in this programme were absolutely gorgeous, but it was worrying when Georgina, one of the bloggers, started receiving abuse, just because she wanted to lose a bit of weight for her wedding. Wanting to be healthy so you can look nice in your wedding dress, get pregnant and run around after your children is not selling out, it’s just being sensible. It would just be nice for once for a woman not to be judged on her body, and seen as a person first. But in the real world, that isn’t going to happen soon.
 

Oh and a fiver on Tess going down the Sophie Dahl route and in five years time being a size six.

 

 

‘AUTOPSY: THE LAST HOURS OF ROBIN WILLIAMS‘ (CHANNEL 5 – DEMAND 5)
 

I’m not sure if this edition of the show was a little too soon after the death of Robin Williams to be broadcast. Other shows have concentrated on long-dead celebrities like Elvis and Karen Carpenter, but Williams has only been gone for nine months. As usual, pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd reads the autopsy report of a dead person and comes to a conclusion as to what killed them. With Robin Williams, it was largely thought that he committed suicide due to a combination of depression, living with Parkinsons disease and having to face financial ruin. But Shepherd concluded that it was above all, dementia that caused him to take his own life. He had undiagnosed dementia which was causing him to behave erratically and suffer from delusions and paranoia.
 

This is an interesting programme, but I don’t like the reconstructions. They feel tacky, and the actor playing Williams seemed to be hamming it up a bit. I even sniggered when he was supposed to be suffering from heart pain and was clutching the right side of his chest! I’m sure it wasn’t meant to be humorous.
 

One good thing is that the programme gives hope to sufferers from depression. Statistically, only one in ten sufferers of depression go on to take their lives, and also if a loved one was showing symptoms similar to Robin Williams, maybe they could intervene and get them diagnosed before it ends in tragedy.

 

‘W1A‘ (BBC2 – BBC iPLAYER)
 

I was a bit harsh on the first series of ‘W1A‘, feeling it was in the shadow of its predecessor, ‘Twenty Twelve‘. But this hour-long special, the first episode in the new series, was one of the funniest things I’ve seen on TV this year. The genius of the show is that it captures all that British awkwardness, in one group of people in one organisation. But I don’t think you would need to have worked in the media to relate to the characters. Anyone who has worked within the public sector (yes the BBC still counts as a public sector employer) will have been to a meeting where nothing is achieved whatsoever, because everyone is so wrapped up in bureaucracy that nothing can be agreed.
 

In this weeks episode, Ian Fletcher and his Way Ahead Task Team were due to meet Prince Charles on his visit to New Broadcasting House. In a way very reminiscent of the Olympic Village Tour fiasco in ‘Twenty Twelve‘ (my favourite episode), there was one almighty cock-up, when Dave, the over-zealous head of security ended up trapping Ian, Tracey and Anna in Old Broadcasting House with just minutes to go before HRH arrives.
 

For me personally, the character of Siobhan Sharpe isn’t as funny as it once was, it has just become a parody of itself, and I found the scene where her numbskull colleagues were playing idea table tennis over long and pointless. In my opinion the new stand-out loose cannon is intern Will, who has overstayed his welcome but finds it difficult to leave. Will is awkwardness personified, and the sort of stupid character who always inadvertently saves the day. In this episode, just as he is about to be turfed out, it emerges his sister is dating tennis player Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who the team want as the new face of Win-bledon. Something tells me that due to this, Will’s application to become Ian’s assistant might just be retrieved from the waste-paper basket.
 

I think the improvement in this series, is that it has gone back to celebrating the ridiculous characters who could quite frankly be picked up and placed in any other office, rather than the first series which largely seemed like an exercise is self-flagellation on the part of the BBC after all that had happened post-Savile. Even the Clarkson scandal was treated as a footnote, and the joke was more on Will and his counting how many times Clarkson said the word ‘tosser’ rather than trying to explain how the racist, homophobic, rude, offensive moron* managed to hold on to his job for so long.
 

*my opinion, no one elses.