The Week on the Telly by Hannah

This week I watched…

New Look Style the Nation, T4

Back in 2009, when I watched Young Butcher of the Year, I realised something bad was happening. Already saturated with people with singing dreams, people with dancing dreams and people with business dreams, television was looking elsewhere for willing flesh to fill its reality- based ambition shows, extending its slimy tentacles out on to our high street. Now it’s the turn of those twenty-something girls who work in Topshop, and wear vintage.

It’s not quite the X Factor auditions as presenter Nick Grimshaw kicks off this series in a shopping centre in London. A handful of potential candidates mill around, anxious to win the top prize of a year’s styling content with New Look, and kick start their career in FASHION. There aren’t many contestants, considering its London. Could it be that everyone there already works in FASHION?

Stylists Kat and Alex are mentoring the two chosen contestants, and are keen to stress that being a stylist is a real job. They ruthlessly reject one candidate for wearing a green hair band, before settling on Caia because she looks the most effortless (thin). Caia is dressed in denim dungarees and a floppy red hat, like a children’s TV presenter. She looks quite nice though, so it’s a shame she’s a liar:

‘When I get up in the morning, I just look what’s on my floor and put things together.’

Hmm.

They also pick Jennifer, because they love her energy. She can make a jumpsuit from scratch in two hours. Skillz. Both contestants have two days to put together three looks for the catwalk. The winner will be voted for by us at home, via the internet. It’s Saturday morning, everyone watching is hung-over. Despite this, a pointless panel of judges is assembled, inexplicably including Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Could it be that she has a single to promote?

A segment on festival fashion awakens me as I slid into torpor. I am not the target market for festival fashion, as I refuse to buy new stuff to go stand in field and have beer thrown over me. However, if you do, it’s all about patterned wellies and fringing.

And now….tension….it’s time to see the contestant’s work! The clothes are nice, the models obviously look great, and I struggle to see anything to choose between them. The judges make vapid comments. Giles Deacon looks like he doesn’t know why he’s there. Like all these contests, it turns into a straightforward popularity contest, and Caia wins, probably because she looks like a typical London hipster.

Sophie Ellis Bextor performs her latest single. It’s time to go back to bed.

I also watched…

Angry Boys, BBC3

If one thing could soften the blow of the (AMAZING) end of Psychoville for me, it would be a new Chris Lilley vehicle. While I’m not sure it’s possible for him to ever top We can be Heroes and Summer Heights High, he doesn’t really have to do anything to make me laugh. Except be multiple characters of gender, age and nationality. So far, Gran, the racist prison warder at a young offender’s institution is the best, simply for making the boys wear homemade superhero pyjamas. I want to be the Zebra from Madagascar, please. This is going to get better and better.

Case Histories, BBC1

It is a FACT that Sunday and Monday evenings suck. What I need, what the nation needs, is a fast paced, two-part drama about a maverick detective with a failed marriage. In just two hours, private detective Jason Isaacs manages to solve the cases of two murdered girls that have baffled the police, have sex with two hot blonde women, find another missing girl, go on a date, and carry on a difficult, conflicted relationship with his ex wife who is taking his daughter to New Zealand. Not bad for a still man haunted by the unsolved murder of his sister. I’m in love.

Next week I’ll be watching… The Fairy Jobmother

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