Staying Alive

Ever get the sort of day where you just feel totally wonderful about being alive? No? Well I’d recommend them if you don’t.

Mine occurred on Friday. I’d had an easy day at work followed by a superb martial arts class and a quick walk through town in the blazing sun. I returned home to my ever-loving (and ever-sarcastic) wife and stepson and even two rejection letters (count them: not one but two!) from the BBC couldn’t dent my bullet-proof joie de vivre. Not even the start of Big Brother could dampen my ardour for life. It was that good. Bliss…

But then I saw The Contender on ITV 1 and my misanthropy returned with a vengeance. The dark curtains of despair were drawn right over the window of my happiness, a window that was then booted in by Chav yobs and bricked up by half-witted builders before being covered with a huge sign reading ‘No entry – ever!’

The Contender is dreadful. It’s so bad that even ITV executives, the people who brought viewers the woefully dreadful Celebrity Love Island (whoever comes first wins!), should be ashamed of screening it.

The premise is that a group of amateur boxers, muscled dullards to a man, join a faux boxing academy with the eventual winner getting a shot at a title of some description. Celebrity boxing faces Sylvester Stallone, he of Rocky fame, and Sugar Ray Leonard, he of cheating Marvin Hagler out of the world title fame, help the contenders along and are on hand to provide ‘salient’ commentary.

But asking these two inarticulate buffoons for incisive insight is a bit like asking Ray Charles to describe scenery on a train journey. They simply don’t have the capacity (the vocabulary, the means of expression, any basic command of diction, etc) whereas at least Ray could make up a song about it.

One memorable exchange on Friday went something like this:
Contender: Ithhsgreathtobehere.
Stallone: Mumblemumblemumblemumble.
Leonard: Whisperwhisperwhisper.

By far the worst trick that the show pulls, though, besides the dull contestants, the idiot experts and the hackneyed Big-Brother-with-fisticuffs format is the introduction of the contestants’ families.

Each episode ends with a fight between two of the contenders with the loser eliminated from the show and the producers ensure the kids of each contender feature prominently in the build-up to this fight. Then during the rounds the cameras linger on the previously introduced kids to gauge their emotions, which go from ecstacy if their fathers triumph to utter gut-wrenching tears and despair if they lose. And the latter is awful to watch.

It’s emotional pornography of the worst kind. People with nothing are offered the chance to get something then when it’s brutally snatched away the cameras are on hand to catch the reactions of adults – and of young children. Cross the You’ve Been Framed! format with footage from Belsen and you couldn’t get a much more exploitative or sickening viewing experience.

Oh, hang on. ITV are already there with that idea and they’ve claimed the copyright…