What She Watched
The Duchess In Hull ITV1
The Supersizers Go Wartime BBC2
Reverend Death C4
The Duchess In Hull was a strange title. I kept mulling it over (more fun if the duchess had been in Mull, obviously) because such a 'Titled Person Does What the Other Bit of the Title Says They'll Do' title hinted at a potentially subversive subtext or, at the very least, a rubbish pun - The Duchess in Hell...?
But no, after considerable, and clearly entirely unnecessary, over-analysis, I came to the startling non-conclusion that this show was called The Duchess in Hull because it was, in fact, about Sarah, Duchess of York visiting some people in Hull ... I know... bonkers, innit?
Title aside, however, this was extraordinary stuff, possibly even the moment when the populist TV 'documentary' genre not only jumped the shark but proceeded to ask it to present the forthcoming (in my dreams) series, 'Your 10 Favourite Episodes of Happy Days'.
The Duchess in Hull was, I think, some sort of attempt by Fergie to re-enter polite British society after more than a decade of professional and emotional estrangement in New York, where, despite the many obstacles in her path (including being loathed almost as much as Heather Mills is now) she has allegedly forged herself a career as 'a successful lifestyle and diet guru'.
A priceless bit of footage last year saw the duchess hanging (for the cameras at least) with, of all unlikely people, 50 Cent, who described her as 'so big ... she's like King Kong, baby' - an unfortunate point of reference by Fiddy, given that Fergie was, until recently, the successful uber-spokesperson for US WeightWatchers, responsible for a 60 (yeah, not Fiddy) per cent increase in North American class attendances. Though I think - hope - the celebrated rappist was talking about the supersize of her US celebrity, rather than her bum.
Anyway, the concept was that the duchess would tear herself away from giving motivational talks ('I chose the best-looking prince of the lot!') to pupils at her daughter Princess Eugenie's school, Marlborough, or hauling Princess Beatrice (the other thing she has in common with Heather Mills is a daughter called Beatrice - though not the 'princess' bit, which she shares only with Katie Price) off to a charity bash at her mate Elton's house to visit some common people on a council estate in Hull, and advise them how it may be possible to not kill themselves on a diet of fags, reconstituted meat products, chips, fags and other assorted toxins.
Sarah was so up for it and enthused, albeit in a labrador-puppy-interfacing-with-a-loo-roll sort of way, that it was quite touching; meanwhile, the Sargerson family had long since forgotten how to be up for anything, but at least their 100 per cent sedentary 'lifestyle' meant they were unlikely to run away when the cameras arrived on their doorstep.
The family (mum Tonia, dad Mick, various kids) didn't know who the sleb bossyboots was going to be (Oprah? Vanessa Feltz? Kerry Katona?) and, indeed, when the duchess did tip up they were precisely none the wiser, though Mrs S thought Sarah 'looked familiar'. Excruciatingly, once their guest had name-dropped the Queen as her former mother-in-law, everybody twigged that she wasn't Diana or even the homely one married to Edward, and got down to business.
Sarah has issues, no doubt about it, and low-self esteem and all sorts of baggage, emotional and, er, well, just baggagey-luggage really, but even when out of her comfort zone she does her damnedest not to show it, with the ironic result that all attempts not to patronise her obese, chain-smoking hostess resulted in exactly the opposite of what Sarah sought (and indeed deserved), in that it made her look a fool.
Worlds colliding can make for brilliant telly, as fans of Tribe and last year's charming Meet the Natives will testify, and this was about as anthropologically fascinating as Britain's class divide could get. Unfortunately, everything else about it was entirely bogus. Fergie, deploying her best transatlantic aromatherapy-speak, attempted to cajole the Sargersons into accepting they were in control of their own destiny, but it fell on deaf ears mostly because the language barrier was too great. Sheepishly, the family baaa'ed their consent to whatever the DoY suggested, while intending, as far as I could tell, to take on board precisely none of it.
These weren't particularly horrible people, just ignorant. Mrs Sargerson didn't know the price of apples when asked; meanwhile, Fergie trolley-pushed enthusiastically, while admitting cheerily: 'I never go to supermarkets!' Like I say, nobody was actually horrible, but everybody was indeed a bit stupid, and as the atoms collided in the particle accelerator on Planet Stupid, things got even stupider.
Fergie spent quite a lot of time talking earnestly about how much she cared, how much love she could feel, how optimistic she was about the family's health plan, while the Sargersons, who had never had this much attention from a sacked former royal in their lives, much less a camera crew in fawning attendance, went through the motions. Though the less we dwell on the Sargersons' motions, the happier we will be.
Not only did Fergie remain pretty much hands-off apart from pep talks, I didn't believe she had contributed to any part of the Sargerson Masterplan other than to give it her OK. By the end of the show, the family was eating occasional vegetables on-camera, had lost a few pounds between them and no longer smoked inside the house, but this hardly constituted a dramatic volte-face, however much it might have been spun that way.
I wonder if the Sargersons, who live on benefits and have £80 per week to spend on food for five, were paid for their time and trouble? So desultory were their stabs at self-improvement they must have been given pep talks off-camera by the production team, surely? Either way, at the end of the metaphorical day, Sarah talked about feeling 'the love, the need...' while the Sargersons seemed genuinely, if slightly indulgently, fond of their occasional visitor. And though it was a tough call, I think Fergie probably needed the Sargersons more than they needed her, if only because they know their place in the world, more or less, while she's still looking for hers, even though she almost certainly won't find it by taking part in a bogus, overblown, entirely gratuitous and wholly contrived piece of almost unwatchably embarrassing TV, for which I don't suppose the fee went to charity.
At the same time as Fergie was feeling the Sargersons' love, The Supersizers Go Wartime tu ned out to be Giles Coren and Sue Perkins pretending to be married and eating 1940s rations, which was, possibly despite itself, rather informative about such forgotten treats as powdered eggs, snoek and Woolton pie.
I'm not entirely sure why (other than a big enough budget) Allegra McEvedy was on hand to cook for Coren and Perkins in their semi. Couldn't they have cooked for themselves, or would that have compromised the verbal 'amuse-bouche'? Anyway, it seemed like an inappropriate luxury for wartime, even when McEvedy was making skilly, the vomitous-looking grated carrot and oatmeal soup-style food-thing, and just the sort of improving menu item the duchess may have rustled up for the Sargersons when they were down to their last Bernard Matthews Turkey Drummer and ha'pennyworth of chewing tobacco.
This week the Supersizers Go ... oh, I dunno ... Baroque? Medieval? Mayan? Whatever. But it's bound to be fun, mostly because the presenters are clearly enjoying themselves hugely, if show-offily. But whichever century they slip into, I doubt Giles Coren's execrable table manners will improve very much. Good Lord, man - even the Sargersons use cutlery to eat their ketchup and mash.
By the time I got to Reverend Death, Jon Ronson's surreally disturbing (all the more so for being lightly handled) documentary about George Exoo, a Mr Magoo-ish Unitarian pastor from West Virginia whose 'calling' is helping people commit suicide, I was starting to feel queasy; by the time Exoo bolted from chronic fatigue syndrome sufferer Pam's house, because, instead of swallowing her poison as agreed, she had chosen to fix herself a bagel with cream cheese, I was gagging.
Pam didn't die that night, but later, assisted by George. As a former sufferer of CFS myself, this depressed me enormously. While it's certainly miserable as hell, CFS is very often also curable by, among other things, embracing a rigorous diet that not only excludes the questionable attentions of a 'Reverend Death', but also, painfully ironically, processed white flour products such as bagels. And if that's a tasteless note to end on, then it's been a tasteless sort of week.
A madman or a mouse
Tonight sees the final episode of the first series of Mad Men (BBC4, repeated BBC2 Tuesday), but last week's penultimate episode was a beautiful thing. With Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm, in grave danger of being undone by Pete Campbell's ambition and steaming sense of entitlement, our antihero hurtled into the arms of his mistress (and client), the department store owner, Rachel Menken, and begged her to run away with him.
'Now, what kind of a man are you? Go away, drop everything, leave your wife?'
'People do it every day...'
'This was a dalliance; a cheap affair.'
'Rachel, don't...'
'You don't want to run away with me, you just want to run away. You're a coward.'
Subsequently we discovered just how much of an emotional coward Draper is capable of being - but, intriguingly, it doesn't seem to diminish him.
Mad Men is still the very best drama on TV, though I hardly dare to hope it can sustain.