Channel 4’s Banged Up could be escape from Alcatrash… in reality it’s a brilliant, terrifying & depressing piece of TV
MARCHING into Shrewsbury jail for his latest reality show stint, soap veteran Sid Owen was in an unequivocal mood.
“Without acting,” he said, solemnly, “I’d have definitely done a prison sentence.”
And with acting?
He still ended up serving 18 years on EastEnders, over five punishing stretches as long-suffering grease monkey Ricky Butcher.
If ever he had regrets about his life choices, though, they were probably binned at his first cavity check on Channel 4’s Banged Up.
What the show’s prison officers were hoping to find up Sid Owen’s fundament, I can only guess.
Drugs? Mobile phones? McKlunky’s Chicken Shop? The Queen Vic’s five-a-side football team?
But it was a twin reminder that crime doesn’t pay and Channel 4 has never recovered from the decade it spent hosting Big Brother.
Stifled grunts
Thirteen years after they finally binned the show, it remains a network that cannot see a large empty building, like Shrewsbury nick, without wanting to fill it with cameras and minor celebrities performing a series of demeaning tasks in the name of “a unique social experiment”.
In this respect, Banged Up at first glance appears to be no improvement on Open House: The Great Sex Experiment, The Circle, My Trans Summer and all the rest of the Big Brother copies it’s shoved into the gaping void since 2010.
It differs from all of these shows though, in one simple respect. It’s brilliant.
It’s also terrifying, degrading and depressing, at various turns.
But it’s still brilliant, for all sorts of obvious reasons, including the celebrities, who arrive in nervous dribs and drabs.
First through the large doors were Johnny Mercer MP, Marcus Luther, from Gogglebox, and Sid, who’d had enough by the end of the third quarter and attempted an escape which was resolved in the most underwhelming manner possible after the advert break.
“Having managed to escape through an unmanned gate,” narrator Shaun Dooley revealed, “the officers have located Sid Owen in the prison yard.”
Inept as it was, you can’t fault the lad’s survival instincts, because the thing that really sets this show apart are the “reformed” ex-cons C4’s hired to fill the prison, who have clearly been told to “act up and kick off” but are doing it in very convincing fashion.
All of them are to be avoided but the most convincing of the lot is an ex-gangland enforcer called Kevin Lane, who, quite apart from putting the fear of God in everyone, was born to perform on TV.
It’s probably as well then, the celeb chosen to share with Kevin was Sandhurst-trained Johnny Mercer, a genuinely hard man who’s served with the Commandos and probably thought he’d seen it all until his brooding cellmate asked: “Do you smoke?”
Correct answer here was “No”, but Johnny admitted he did and quickly discovered Kevin doesn’t just carry a sense of grievance with him everywhere.
He’s got a stash of tobacco too . . . up his rectum, which was retrieved with a few stifled grunts.
One of those moments where you didn’t need scratch and sniff television.
Johnny Mercer’s face said everything and could not have registered more disgust if someone had told him Carol Vorderman had just been made Defence Secretary.
Subtle, it wasn’t. But then nothing about Banged Up is, including the bleeding-heart political agenda which is obvious from the fact the celebrities chosen for punishment include Johnny, fellow ex-Tory Neil Parish, the tractor porn MP, and right-wing newspaper columnist Peter Hitchens.
It’s a reformist message that’ll find little favour with those who’ve been a victim of the ex-cons’ crimes, let alone anyone who watched BBC2’s The Detectives: Taking Down An OCG this week and probably couldn’t dream up a punishment too extreme for the low-life involved.
It doesn’t ruin the show though, because I’ve rarely seen a starker or better TV deterrent against crime than the tobacco scene on Banged Up, which left Johnny Mercer looking like he’d been hit by tear gas and asking “What the f*** just happened?”
What just happened, if my professional instincts don’t desert me, Johnny, is what’s technically known as The Sure Stank Redemption (Banged Up, C4, Tuesday, 9.15pm).
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
TIPPING POINT, Ben Shephard: “Type 45 destroyers are ships that belong to which branch of the British Armed Forces?”
Sylvia: “The Royal Air Force.”
Ben Shephard: “In archaeology, the three metal ages are the Copper Age, the Iron Age and which other?”
Darien: “The Steel Age.”
Ben Shephard: “Shortbread is a traditional biscuit associated with which country of the UK?”
Ashley: “England.”
The Chase, Bradley Walsh: “The dromedary type of what mammal was domesticated over 4,000 years ago?”
Peter: “Bear.”
Random irritations
THE bloke on Alan Carr’s Picture Slam (James) who identified a photograph of Quentin Crisp as “Burt Reynolds.”
BBC1 robbing another drama of its character by cutting-and-pasting a woke London agenda all over Shetland.
Jonathan Pearce looking like he’d just spent another night sleeping under Bournemouth Pier before appearing on Football Focus.
And the chilling reality that where once Comic Relief could call upon Billy Connolly, Ricky Gervais and Peter Kay, we’re staring down the barrel of a Stand Up To Cancer night, on Channel 4, with Adam Hills, Nish Kumar, Joe Lycett and Munya Chawawa.
Television comedy is dead.
A SHOW ON A GO SLOW
OVER on BBC1’s Survivor reboot in the Dominican Republic, the 18 contestants are attempting a “Dead Weight challenge”, both literally and metaphorically.
And I don’t rate their chances of success on either count, given this reality show’s chequered history.
Twenty one years ago, before even Jude sodding Bellingham was born, ITV gave up on Survivor after two dreadfully overhyped series and I’ve seen nothing here to suggest their instincts weren’t spot on.
The games still move at coastal erosion pace and the cameramen seem more interested in the crabs than contestants, who all have an Apprentice whiff about them, apart from one character with a prosthetic limb, called Peg Leg, who looks exactly like a one-legged, working-class version of Alexander Armstrong, if you can imagine such an exotic thing.
Ant & Dec could and indeed did make the Survivor format work on I’m A Celeb, but Joel Dommett seems out of his depth and unable to shake off his impostor syndrome or shut the f*** up even for one single second.
With the result?
On Saturday, having inherited Strictly’s bumper audience, Survivor had 4.1million viewers. By Sunday, nearly 400,000 had already vanished.
The tribe has spoken.
INCIDENTALLY, the correct answer to last week’s Tipping Point question “Norfolk Beefing is a variety of what fruit?” was “an apple” and not, as I’m ashamed to admit I shouted out, “Stephen Fry”.
I’m going to learn from this experience and grow.
ON ITVBe’s A Family Affair this week, Chloe Madeley said: “When I go on camera I still get nervous ’cos you never know if you’re going to say something stupid or swear or come across badly.”
So let me put all that uncertainty to bed, Chloe. You will.
Lookalike of the week
THIS week’s winner is Strictly’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy in his Jekyll & Hyde make-up and Sharon Osbourne.
Sent in by K Davidson, Edinburgh.
Great sporting insights
SIMON THOMAS: “If a player doesn’t put their arms out to jump, how do they get airtime?”
Dion Dublin: “Does he get caught on the knee? Yes, a knee in the back of the calf.”
Simon Thomas: “Harry Kane has scored an amazing goal. Incredibly, it was from the opponent’s half.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
TV GOLD
HOLOCAUST survivor Avraham Aviel providing a timely reminder at the end of BBC2’s The Devil’s Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes that Israel is “a nation that cannot be trampled upon”.
Channel 4’s brilliantly terrifying Banged Up.
Bella Ramsey’s outstanding performance as Kelsey on BBC1’s Time.
And Matt Hancock’s unforgettable SAS: Who Dares Wins interrogation with Debs, who should get the Newsnight job if she always takes this approach: “Why do you keep raising your eyebrows at me, knobhead?”
But the week’s outstanding show, by far, was BBC2’s Detectives: Taking Down An OCG, which will have left you horrified such evil could lurk in a place like Rochdale, but inspired by the brilliance of DS Martin Soutter and the heroism of a man called Cameron Brooksbank, who dared to stand up for us all.
SINCE the last EastEnders update, Patsy Kensit has straddled Phil Mitchell in the throes of passion on his sofa.
A coupling which, in terms of career progression, represents a bit of a dip since she appeared on the front cover of Vanity Fair in bed with Liam Gallagher.
Remarkably though, it’s not the worst thing that’s happened in the last quarter.
’Cos that’d have to be the fertility clinic scene, where a receptionist asked Reiss: “When did you last have an jaculation?”
A question that made me choke so much I didn’t hear the answer, but suspect it was: “Shortly before my agent told me, ‘You’re Sonia’s new love interest’.”
GREAT TV lies and delusions of the month.
The Great British Bake Off, Dan: “There’s never a dull moment in here, is there?”
The One Show, Jada Pinkett Smith: “I’ve found I’m deeply loveable.”
And Sex: A Bonkers History, Amanda Holden: “This has been the craziest, sexiest and funniest journey I’ve ever been on.”
Although, I suppose, marriage to Les Dennis will do that to a woman.
BIG Brother, post-eviction, Kerry: “What do you think the viewing public might have seen that Hallie did that was so aggravating?”
The breathing thing, mainly.