Thursday, December 13, 2007
Checking out
POST-WATERSHED! The Hotel Inspector, Five, 9.00pm Labels: Five, The Hotel Inspector, TV
We're here today to mourn the end of an era. No, not the last episode in the current series, not just yet. Instead, we're here to mull over some slightly old news (our finger being ever on the pulse): that of Ruth Watson moving to Channel 4. Obviously it's good news in the sense that somebody had the sense to sign up our current favourite lifestyle guru in a golden handcuffs deal, but we can't help worrying about some of the possible after-effects.
First of all, The Hotel Inspector will continue next year without her. Obviously Five are well within their rights to do this, and we can see why they would want to hold on to a successful programme, but we worry about what the show will be like without Ruth? Who will fill her shoes, or perhaps more aptly, her seemingly limitless collection of brightly-coloured blazers? Who will have the same balance of genuine empathy and no-nonsense business sense? Who else can wander around a B&B and surprise you with an unexpected f-bomb every now and then in quite the way that she does?
Which brings us to another point: what if Channel 4 - horror of horrors - put her on before the watershed? Surely such a move would be foolhardy. The brilliance of the Hotel Inspector format is that it's one of the very few programmes of its ilk that regularly screens in a post-9pm slot, and since we've all been indoctrinated to expect a certain type of language from lifestyle shows, that's why you forget that Ruth's allowed to swear, and why it's even more awesome when she does. Censoring Ruth would be like censoring Gordon Ramsay.
However, these are concerns for the future, and we can do little else but hope that someone somewhere is heeding them. In the meantime, Ruth fulfils her contractual obligation to Five by doing a revisit to the Key West Hotel in Newquay, which was once savaged by countless careless stag and hen parties. Ruth pops back to see how proprietors Brian and Gill Scott are getting on, and probably to say "fuck" a lot while she still can. God speed, Ms Watson.
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Thursday, September 13, 2007
Hotel couture
ACCOMMODATING! The Hotel Inspector, Five, 9.00pm Labels: Five, The Hotel Inspector, TV
In yet another example of us apparently having been half-asleep last week (note to self: check the label of those pills just to be on the safe side), we missed the fact that Five was showing the first episode in a new series of The Hotel Inspector. How could this have happened? Especially when we were babbling on about the new series of Suburban Shootout, which was on right afterwards. Gah! Fail, lowculture. Fail.
The previous series of this was one of our guilty pleasure television highlights of last year. Ruth Watson is an absolute find - surely to be a TV legend on the level of Phil'n'Kirstie or Ann Maurice soon, if there's any justice in the world - marching through grubby-looking B&Bs wearing a selection of brightly-coloured yet severe-looking blazers (not more than one at a time, obviously), running a white-gloved finger over radiators to check for dust, shooting a raised-eyebrow at the inevitable touches of "personal" décor, like the creepy dolls dotted all round one establishment we remember. And on top of this, she swears like a bloody sailor. We don't know quite why this is so surprising - perhaps because shows of this ilk are usually pre-watershed, so we only get to hear PG-rated language at the absolute worst (although we'd like to start a campaign here for late-night Location, Location, Location, because we'd love to see what sort of colourful language Kirstie Allsopp comes out with in a post-9pm context), but not so here. Ruth throws around fucks like confetti at a wedding, and we love her for it.
This week, Dame Ruth is in Reading, trying to turn around a fifteen-bedroom hotel, complete with obligatory stubborn owner who refuses to acknowledge any kind of problem. But Ruth is no Sarah Beeny-type diplomatic wallflower - our money's on her telling him it's his fucking money he's fucking well wasting, and if he doesn't do something about it soon, he's well and truly fucking fucked. Ruth, we love you. Please be our new best friend.
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