Thursday, September 01, 2005
Just don't say "JonBenet"...
PAGEANT! Showbiz Moms And Dads, Living TV, 8.00pm
We can see how, on paper, this looked like an excellent idea for a TV show. After all, we all learned from Coronation Street that pushy showbiz mums can be very, very funny. However, there comes a point (and it's often not that far a journey to get there) where they start to look a little pathetic and desperate for attention, so with that in mind, is it really a good idea to make them the focus of a fly-on-the-wall documentary? Don't feed the beast, and so on. Anyway, as if you hadn't already guessed, Showbiz Moms And Dads features a selection of starry-eyed parents, utterly blind to any suggestion that their children may not be the most talented ever in existence (and we're already getting uncomfortable visions of the creepy Stage Mother character from Little Britain), or indeed to any suggestion that their kids might not really want to do it. From what we've seen of the (car-crash) trailers, one lady sighs wistfully as she sees her son growing up to become a teen idol. Because, lest we forget, that is an extremely secure and long-term career path. Also, not that I wish to rain on her parade, but if she really wants that for her son, she'll need to decide now whether she wants him to be a rapist or a closet homosexual, because those are looking like his only options at this point. Another mother resolutely stated that they go to auditions regardless of whether Jordan (who will, in this episode, be shooting a film with Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss) is ill or not. Because, again, what better way to coax the best performance out of a child when they'd rather be tucked up in bed with a dose of Benylin and a copy of Harry Potter? We can't quite decide whether to resent these people or pity them. All we can do is hope for their own sakes that none of the kids are "discovered" as a result of this show.
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