I'll be frank; to date I haven't been able to muster enough life force to sit through an entire episode of this series. So for the purposes of this critique, I'm going to have to extrapolate from the trailer, which is impossible to avoid anyway.

I think I'm right in suggesting that Chris Evans had a hand in this. Chris, where did it all go so horribly Pete Tong? It's been well documented that absolute power corrupted Chris absolutely back in the mid-nineties, destroying his presenter bona fides forever. He would have been the natural choice to present this otherwise. Instead the producers make do and mend with Vernon Kay.

Even Nicholas Parsons (no slouch himself in the TV twat stakes) would balk at letting Vern go in front of the cameras. Firstly, with all due deference to Mr & Mrs Kay, Vernon is a wretched name for a man of his age. This is a bad enough start, but allied to those fcuking teeth it renders his credibility a notch below Chris's even before the opening credits are done. And this, mark you, before we get to the meat of the programme itself.

The basic premise seems to be that Choppers (I can't bring myself to use the v-word) is joined on a shabby soundstage by some office fodder; he then attempts to get the (ahem) alpha male and female to pair-off and rut in an entertaining manner.

The main problem with this otherwise scintillating paradigm is that Chris Evans has a big old hole in his knowledge of British culture; he clearly thinks it's still 1996. Perhaps this is wish fulfillment on his part, or perhaps he's simply been on holiday continually since the heady days of Euro '96 and missed the culture moving on. Either way, the cheeky, lumpen optimism of this programme sits uneasily with the cosseted utilitarianism of modern Britain. Even the studio audience seems strangely subdued. It's like watching a comic die. Horrible really.

I used to love Chris Evans.

Misery Kippers Rating:
 

"I don't fcuking believe it."
Laurie McMenemy