Monday, October 15, 2007
Mind your own business
JUDGEMENT! Dragons' Den, BBC2, 9.00pm Labels: BBC2, Dragons' Den, TV
So: that trail for the new series of Dragon's Den, then? Pretty terrifying, isn't it? If we were the weak-willed sort (which we're obviously not; we sat through the entire men's group dance routine on Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday without running from the room in tears), it'd be likely to give us nightmares. The Dragons are frightening enough at normal size without being digitally enhanced to giantlike proportions. We don't want to think about the Attack of the 50 Foot Deborah Meaden, thanks; we don't imagine it has a happy ending.
That said, the return of Dragons' Den is altogether happier news, having somehow achieved the impossible in tandem with The Apprentice and made business-themed television thoroughly entertaining and borderline unmissable. For this new series, Richard Farleigh (he of the impressive barnet) has sadly been dropped from the panel (the debate over why he isn't there any more belongs to a website with a better legal team than this one has) and replaced by new face James Caan. No, not that one. Still present on the panel are Deborah Meaden, Duncan Bannatyne, Theo Paphitis and Peter Jones, who will probably not be discussing the fortunes of Tycoon, more's the pity.
In the opening episode, a professional David Beckham lookalike is after £100,000 to start a "celebrity doubles experience", which we assume has surprisingly little to do with tennis, while another hopeful is after £60,000 to franchise his portable gold-plating business. Let's hope they remembered to pack their nerves of steel in preparation for those icy glares.
By Steve :: Post link
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Wednesday, July 18, 2007
So good, he named it twice
UPDATE! Dragons' Den: Where Are They Now?, BBC2, 8.00pm Labels: BBC2, Dragons' Den, TV
This is not, sadly, a documentary charting what happened to Peter Jones after he had the idea to cart a show off to ITV, although that probably would be quite fun to watch. Especially the part where he saw the ratings. Don't lose heart, however, because this is a progress report on the various entrepreneurs who appeared on the last series of Dragons' Den and what sort of situation they're in now. It's the bit where you hope the ones you liked are doing well for themselves, and the ones you didn't are foraging for scraps in wheelie bins. Unless you're a nicer person than we are, which is quite likely.
The big selling point in this particular episode is that it revisits the now-infamous Levi Roots, inventor of Reggae Reggae Sauce. The only sauce (that we know of) to come with its very own musical accompaniment (the "I feel like chicken tonight" song does NOT count), or at the very least the only one where the jingle was released as a single in its own right. At least, we were told that was happening. We don't really know if it ever did. That's sort of the point of this programme in fairness, isn't it? He did at least get to perform it on Harry Hill's TV Burp, which is a high accolade in its own right.
Also appearing in tonight's show are the duo who persuaded all five dragons to invest in their Standby Saver. We have to admit we didn't see this episode, so we have no idea what one of those is or does, but it might be something to do with saving standbys. That's our gut instinct, anyway. Or possibly something huggable and eco-friendly having to do with stopping TVs from being left on standby and wasting power. Our flatmate does this all the time, and every time he does it we kick him in the bollocks. That's more of a short-term solution, though, so perhaps we do need one of those things after all.
By Steve :: Post link
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Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Monkey Business
SWEATY! Dragons’ Den, BBC2, 8pm Labels: BBC2, Dragons' Den, TV
Everyone’s favourite humiliation-fest dressed up as a business show is back! Fantastically, it looks like Dragons’ Den is sticking to the format of having one slightly decent business idea bobbing around in a faux-fur-seated toilet of lunacy. ‘Slightly decent idea’ being the key term here, given that last year’s example of a great business was a shop selling baseball caps.
Tonight’s show features such indispensable items as: a ‘woolly warmer’ - a bag designed to solve the perennial nightmare of how to keep lambs cosy; a glove to remind idiots to drive on the other side of the road when abroad; an extremely complicated lemon-slicer; and reggae reggae sauce (complete with its own theme song, but employing which musical genre we wonder?). All fantastic proposals if the business plan involves adding LSD to the local water supply.
Hopefully at least one of the ‘entrepreneurs’ will be really arrogant and defend his rubbish idea to the point of insulting the Dragons so we don’t feel too bad when he is reduced to a worthless husk by the rich bullies. Peter Jones in particular has a great talent for causing people to perspire uncontrollably by glaring at them as if they’ve just crapped in a carrier bag and thrown it at him.
Dragons’ Den is wonderfully life-affirming in that it makes you feel like a business genius merely because you haven’t remortgaged your house on the basis of a delusional belief that the masses are desperate for a coffee table with a TV screen inside. During the bits where we’re not too busy feeling smug, we’ll be looking to see whether Richard Farleigh has realised it’s not the 1980s.
By Kellie :: Post link
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