The Week on the Telly: September 16 2011 by Hannah
Don’t tell the bride, BBC3
Despite a wedding being a union of two people, making the promise to spend the rest of their lives together, it is tradition that the groom should have no say whatsoever in how the day pans out. Desperate to end this cruel stereotype ONCE AND FOR ALL, BBC3 are doing sterling work in promoting the rights of grooms to choose how their bride is packaged on their big day. In fact, Don’t Tell the Bride has been running for five years now, making countless men very happy indeed.
Tonight it’s the turn of rugby lad Josh, trying to please his demanding fiancée Stacey. Will he give Stacey the most romantic day of her life? Josh is just 22, and Stacey wants things like horses and carriages and bells and facials, so I suspect not.
Josh moves out of the family house, leaving Stacey to ponder what she really wants from a wedding. She takes her Mum and step-sister on a tour of venues she approves of. It’s a stately home or nothing, and she is particularly enamoured of one in the Cotswolds:
‘I want everyone to be waiting outside while I gallop up on my horse, then we’ll have canapés…….what’s a canapé?
Josh meanwhile has booked a castle for two hours for the ceremony, but is unable to find a reception venue at short notice…..until he remembers his local rugby club. It’s even free for members, so he’s saved thousands. Now his only worry is that Stacey will hate it (she will hate it), resulting in the decision to have a themed reception celebrating his Irish and Stacey’s Jamaican roots.
What could possibly go wrong?
Now, it’s on to the wedding dress. Both Stacey and Josh get to look at dresses, but it’s Josh doing the picking. There is just one type of dress that Stacey doesn’t want, a sweetheart neckline, because it makes her boobs look massive. All Josh needs to find is an A line halter neck dress with white lace. Who’s betting that he wanders towards the sweetheart necklines because it sounds pretty?
Of course that’s exactly what he does.
Josh has also arranged Stacey’s hen do, which consists of a mini bus to the bingo, then a night out in Birmingham. He was probably distracted by organising his rugby stag-do. It’s lucky that he does have chance to get trashed though, as his next nightmare is shopping with Stacey’s eight bridesmaids for a green dress that they all like on a budget of £30 each. Messy.
The day before the wedding Stacey goes to see her dress for the first time…she likes it! Phew. Now, will she like the reception venue? Everyone loves the castle, and heaps praises on Josh. They all eat canapés, much to Stacey’s delight. Let’s see if they’re still smiling when they’re driven back to the rugby club.
In the end, it’s all totally fine, and Josh has done a great job at decorating the function room, and everyone has a great time and loves it. This is all very heart-warming for them, but leaves a big void empty of drama and conflict in MY heart, a lump of stone that is only warmed by the misery of others.
Four Weddings US, Sky Living
More wedding nonsense now; this time four brides fight it out to win a dream honeymoon by letting the other three attend and score their wedding. For more extreme bitchiness, it’s set in the U.S. Surely this will fulfil my deep seated need for wedding-related unhappiness and crying.
Heather’s wedding is going to be amazing, which is good, because it’s costing $80,000. It’s going to be the ‘over the top beach wedding of her dreams.’ Fellow bride Shakila hates beach weddings (uh oh), and is spending £10,000 on her princess winter themed wedding. Jessica is laid back and hates the idea of being a princess (uh oh), but she is excited about her cocktail hour. Final bride Chimere doesn’t drink (uh oh), so is having a dry Paris themed wedding. The Eiffel tower is made of cardboard.
What could possibly go wrong?
Sadly I can’t tell you who won, because I got bored and switched over after half an hour to watch….
Planet Dinosaur, BBC1
Wow, dinosaurs are very bit as awesome as I remember from my childhood. In fact, they’re even more awesome; recently many new fossils have been discovered, and new technology means scientists know more than ever before about what dinosaurs looked like and who ate who. Africa was home to the giant Spinosaurus, a cross between T Rex and a crocodile, only BIGGER. Like crocodiles, Spinosaurus also spent a lot of time in the water, and ate fish. Sigh. I definitely prefer land based predators.
Also Spinosaurus, you have a boring name! You might look like a dragon, but Tyrannosaurus will always be my favourite. Though I probably won’t tell you that to your spiky face.
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I actually watched some TV for a change this week that wasn’t QI reruns on Dave.
I was disappointed with ‘Planet Dinosaur’ on Wednesday, there was far too much guesswork afoot. Of the Spinosaurus that they concentrated on only pieces of rib, sail, tail and neck have been discovered along with half a skull. And from that they can deduce it has workable tearing arms, long legs and lives in a swamp eating fish for half the year.
With this in mind, i took the rest of the programme to also be hypothesis being passed off as fact .
Unfortunately this kind of ‘knowledge’ tends to travel fast, when in fact it’s just a couple of “scientists” making things up.
Well, I enjoyed it, but then I’m not really about the science. Realistically I think there’s probably only so much ‘science’ that can be explained in a half an hour BBC show, especially one that is aimed at a family audience. If you read the wikipedia entry for Spinosaurus there’s a list of specimens and further reading that will probably be more informative.