Two returning shows and a one-off special constitute John Byrne's latest look at the telly world.
Reviewed: The X Factor (Saturday, TV3 & UTV); 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy (Tuesday, Sky1); An Evening with Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse (Monday, BBC 2)
Some time ago I struck a one-sided deal with The X Factor (Saturday, TV3 & UTV). Year after year, this colossal karaoke competition keeps coming back, and the Whitney wannabes are over this show like a melismatic rash. 'As soon as anyone mentions Whitney Houston,' I said to myself, "I am outta here.'
Oscar Wilde wrote a story called The Canterville Ghost, and that came to mind as the ads rolled along before The X Factor began. This time Louis Walsh was playing The Cadbury Ghost, as he appeared in a couple of cheesy ads, dressed in appropriate Cadbury colours and singing Yes Sir, I can Boogie, Baccara's dull disco hit from the 1970s. That was about as good as the evening was going to get, really.
As this year's X Factor got underway, the hype hit the kind of high notes even the late Minnie Ripperton couldn't reach. Opening with a Mission: Impossible spoof, new co-hosts Olly Murs and Caroline Flack were instructed by Simon Cowell to search for talent, and we were off with the auditions at London's Wembley stadium. All without a trace of irony, relaxed facial muscles or dental decay.
The first singer up in front of the new judging panel was typical of The X Factor: an utterly talentless attention-seeker who could do with some life coaching. Susan Price may be 60, but she seems to have learned little from her time on Earth. Launching into 2 Unlimited's No Limits, a big hit back in the 1990s, she turned her back on the judges and the audience, bent over slightly and began smacking her large, protruding bum. The remote control felt like a detonator in my hand.
Next up was Lauren, a 25-year-old dentist's receptionist from London. 'I'm gonna do a Whitney,' she roared. I felt my pulse quicken and a sense of impending freedom had me pointing the remote at the telly practising a channel change. 'Not long now, John', I whispered.
She rattled off a few song titles, each greeted by Simon Cowell saying 'by Whitney', until he stopped her when she mentioned Somebody Else's Guy, which struck some resonance with the panel. After a false start, the singing gymnastics began, and Lauren took us on a journey through several octaves, showing exactly why vocal dexterity is no substitute for heart-felt emotion. The crowd loved it, the judges grinned even broader than before (new judge Nick Grimshaw was clearly struggling to maintain his perma-grin), and I changed channel. Goodbye X Factor.
Back for a second run, 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy (Tuesday, Sky1) returned with Baz Ashwamy even more determined to turn his mother Nancy into a nervous wreck. This episode was set in the Philippines, starting in a male prison in the city of Cebu.
The place was full of murderers and drug dealers, so Baz was understandably nervous as he moved through the prison and noticed a lack of prison guards. He bricked it a little bit more when it dawned on him that this was basically a self-run correctional facility. An oblivious Nancy decided to start asking the obvious, 'So what are you in for?' question. The killers just smiled.
What followed was ridiculous and was basically a flashmob event as 700 dancing inmates descended on the yard, with Baz and Nancy in the middle of it all. As prisons go, this looked like a fun place to get dancing with lifers.
Then it was off to the local zoo, where the intrepid couple got massaged by giant snakes. Once again, Nancy took it easy while Baz's eyes bulged as the pythons got a little too cosy for comfort. Snakes. Eh? They have no concept of boundaries.
It was on the 38th floor of a hotel where Nancy finally showed she was human and Baz proved he's a naughty boy at heart. Outside there's a roller coaster that neither rolls nor coasts, but circles the building and leans over the edge at 90 degree angles. Nancy wasn't up for this, but Baz convinced her to try it out.
Honestly, I thought it was a bit much to put her through what was clearly an extremely uncomfortable situation, but I'm someone who has a major problem with heights.
Happily back on the ground, Nancy was then brought to a traffic school, to learn how to direct traffic in Manila rush hour. In an afternoon. The theory bit seemed to go over the heads of the Irish pair, and when Nancy witnessed the reality of a seven-lane intersection, her face drained and she brought Maria, a fellow trainee, along for company. A worried Baz was relieved to see her get back on the path in one piece.
A trip to the parents of an Irish-based Filipino nurse Nancy knew offered some light relief, and then it was off to the remote island of Coron, where rafting in a lagoon had Nancy hitting an imaginary panic button, before Baz jumped off or a swim, leaving her alone and calling his name.
They'll be back for more next week, and I'll certainly be there too, from the safety of my living room. This show is great fun, and the bond between mother and son is a joy to watch.
Another treat was An Evening with Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse (Monday, BBC 2). Celebrating 25 years working together – even though they've been together much longer - the show was itself a pastiche of those painfully reverential events where someone famous sits in an auditorium and gets brown-nosed by other famous people. Nauseating stuff, but this parody was spot-on.
This time the two lads played all the contributing members of the audience, impersonating the likes of Ricky Gervais, Harry Hill and Margaret Thatcher. It all got pretty surreal before the end, with Enfield's Melvyn Bragg leading the charge as the pair got tagged as racist, misogynistic, homophobic, etc.
The hour flew by, which – one assumes – is a good sign. Let's hope the next 25 years of Enfield and Whitehouse are just as funny.
John Byrne
