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The week ahead: Poor girls are rich pickings in TV formula
Conrad Astley23/ 2/2006
IT'S a formula which has worked wonders in the past - and when
TV producers find a winning formula, they stick to it.
You get someone from a council estate and someone from a leafy,
well-heeled suburb, and make them swap places.
With a bit of luck, you end with a huge argument, and if you're
really lucky, you get a scumbag celeb like Wife Swap's Lizzie
Bardsley.
As its title suggests, the new series of
Poor Little Rich
Girls (
Thursday, ITV1) treads this familiar path,
with sassy - err - Sassy swapping her life as an oxygen-wasting DJ
and model, with Leanne, a hard-working cleaner.
Strangely enough, there's no tears of punch-ups this time, as both
of the girls appreciate what the other has.
Either an affirmation of the power of television to bring people
together, or a disappointment, depending on your point of
view.
They're like buses, these camp has-been actresses.
You wait ages for an appearance by Joan Collins in a low-market
British TV drama, and then two come along at once.
No sooner has it been announced she's appearing in
Footballers' Wives (
Thursday, ITV1) when
she turns up on the other side in
Hotel Babylon
(
Thursday, BBC1).
Her over-worked agent has landed her a role as an aloof wealthy
aristocrat, just to prove how extensive her repertoire really
is.
The brilliant
Life On Mars (
Monday, BBC1)
reaches its finale this week.
As every episode starts with detective Sam Tyler asking why he has
found himself transported form 1996 to 1973, presumably the
conclusion will go some way to answering this question - is he
dead, mad or in a coma?
The good news is we've been promised a second series - and there is
even talk of a film - so no doubt the writers won't be tying up all
the loose ends, and they may even introduce a few new ones.
While the story of those who died onboard The Titanic has been told
from every conceivable angle - poor Irish migrants, nouveau riche
Americans, jaded European aristocrats - a documentary looks at the
tale in a completely new way.
Natural World (
Wednesday, BBC2) makes the
point that nobody ever thinks about the poor iceberg itself, and
rather bizarrely tells the life story of the giant slab of ice
which sent over 1,500 souls to the bottom of the Atlantic.
I think it was just misunderstood.
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