Vanity Lair (C4, published February 25th 08)

I've gradually come to accept that Channel 4 has ditched home-grown quality drama and
comedy in favour of American-style imports. What I don't appreciate is their utilisation
of pretentious psycho-babble as a smokescreen for the programme's shallow intentions.
Which brings me to Vanity Lair, a show which the formerly respectable Alexa Chung reminds
us before and after every commercial break is "a sociological experiment designed to make
the contestants question what's really attractive". To which I contest "Is it fuck,
Alexa! Get back on Popworld with your passable attempts at Simon Amstell-esque dry wit."
Vanity Lair features everything I find despicable in American reality shows, including
the filming in a large mansion (Why? Why?!), the dramatic slow-motion camera shots of
doors opening to reveal a serious-looking presenter and all that pausing for 30 seconds
before announcing anything. Adding up all the suspenseful pauses employed in reality TV
brings you to the woeful realisation that you spend around a quarter of your viewing time
watching nothing at all.

Having ditched my TV as an ingenious solution to the niggling problem of actually paying
for my TV licence, I've found the 4OD player is ideally fitted to my viewing needs.
Specifically, when watching Vanity Lair, I can skip the token 'scientific experiment'
segment of the episode to the parts that - let's not deny it - the show is all about.
Like the bitchy Geordie model crying and vomiting because his face was the least
symmetrical. You read the last sentence correctly - VOMITING because he was
'scientifically' the least attractive housemate.

Though the puke scene was a spectacular demonstration of the depths of human narcissism,
the most grating contestant is the guy that's continually criticising his fellow cretins
for being "too into how they look". Did I miss something here? This is in spite of the
fact that he at some point responded to an ad in Heat that said "Are you a self-obsessed
twat? Wanna be on telly? Then call us now!"

When are reality TV shows going to drop the facade of being anything other than
televised bearbaiting? That's not a moral judgement, it's just that if they cut out all
the intelligence tests and pretend-science bits, it'd leave a greater amount of time to
put all of the contestants in a giant maze and track their gradual degeneration week by
week. The finale would see them hauled out by the scruff of the neck and thrust back into
a cold, unforgiving world, in which even employment with Tesco (never mind glamour
modelling) is but a distant dream. Now that would be Vanity Lair living up to its name.