TAX AVOIDANCE STREET
Jimmy Carr and the few remaining members of Take That are moved into a cul-de-sac of detached maisonettes, where they lean over shared garden walls and swap tips on how best to apologise to the public. “I just done a tweet and then hid for a bit,” Gary Barlow drones, and Carr does that goose-honk laugh of his. Over the way, a shadowy cabal of HSBC bosses swim in literal pools of gold, like Scrooge McDuck, if Scrooge McDuck had the visceral torso fat that indicates a predication for diabetes and a history of bringing down the vibe at sex parties. Rylan Clark hosts a spin-off debate show on More4, where the only six people who can be bothered to schlep out to Elstree tell his shotgun mic how dishy they think Gary Barlow looks in his tracksuit.
TROLL STREET
Jumping on the craze that’s sweeping the nation – talking smack for absolutely no reason on the internet and driving people to their very wits’ end – producers embark on Troll Street, an experiment in making fedora-clad nerds in neckbeards talk to each other with their mouths. The test is an unmitigated disaster: polite to the point of shyness on the few occasions they bump into each other in the street as they make a run to the shops for Wotsits and Dr Pepper, the trolls only rip into each other online, ordering pizzas to each others’ houses and calling each other shitlords on 4Chan. With much of the action taking place onscreen, producers are forced to set up cameras pointed directly at cheese dust-sprinkled keyboards, and a succession of editors quit after having to excise hour upon hour of masturbation footage. Wank-free, the show’s a flop.
CORONATION STREET
Turning to pastiche in an attempt to win back viewers, in an idea that has 3am At The Groucho written all over it, producers move a bunch of royalists to a suburban street in Hull. They have weekly street parties (the community unites after Terry, 82, falls badly off a ladder while stringing up bunting), take merry minibus trips to the Diana Memorial Fountain, and all get really weird and guarded about their collection of tea towels with Prince Charles’s face on them. But nobody really likes watching exceptionally boring people having fun, so – in an idea that has 4am At The Groucho written all over it – the producers start killing off the main characters by getting them run over by a hit-and-run driver on their wedding day. It all gets a bit Hollyoaks, to be honest.
1970S ENTERTAINER STREET
In a bid to reform the perception that they’re all criminal sex monsters, the Union of 1970s Entertainers (formerly the Bit Of Blue For The Dads Collective) tries to win back the public’s confidence by transplanting some of their unblemished big names into the popular Street format and reveal their real selves (Jimmy Krankie is filmed with a can of Special Brew) so that they can remind people how innocent they are (Tony Blackburn’s cheery sofa monologues prove to viewers that the decade wasn’t all bad). Soon, though – like thoroughbred greyhounds lost without the track – the entertainers return to type, gorging themselves on Angel Delight and duck a l’orange and dancing en masse to the Bee Gees (Paul Daniels’s falsetto is “particularly haunting”, according to several Ofcom complainants). When Chris Tarrant strikes up a Chuck-and-Wilson style relationship with a Pet Rock, producers take the decision to quietly lock the entertainers away for their safety and ours. Which, arguably, should have been done years ago.
TV COMMISSIONER STREET
The TV commissioner tail goes after the head in TV Commissioner Street, a vanity project that sees Channel 4’s CEO David Abraham share a street with a bunch of lower-level commissioners who all either have ponytails or put their hands together in prayer when they think. The show is mainly about them shouting at each other to get coffee (“WHAT don’t you UNDERSTAND about SOY MILK you INCOMPETENT PIG-PERSON!”) while they try to create a format around pretty much everyone the community has to offer. Shaheen’s: The Story About A Newsagent is a fly-on-the-wall flop, as is Lollipop Lady: The Story About A Lollipop Lady. Turns out real life just isn’t that interesting, after all.
DRAGON STREET
“Sod it,” producers say, eventually. “Just sod it. I don’t know. Dragon Street. How about that? How about some sodding dragons?” And lo, Dragon Street is born. Against all odds, the format is the most successful of the lot: fiery lizards, harbingers of doom, screech across the sky over a sleepy council estate in Rotherham. Petty squabbles erupt over gold piles (“ARGGGHGGH!” the show’s standout star, White Dragon, tells her black counterpart. “ARGGGHGGHGHGGH!”) while portentous storm clouds slowly crowd the sky. A key storyline sees a bunch of local kids accidentally crack open a 1,000-year-old dragon egg while using it as a makeshift goalpost, and their consequent slaughter at the hands of the slowly awakening wet, umbrella-like creature inside goes double viral. To close the series, White Dragon gets a sassy bob, goes on a public jolly to Magaluf, and becomes a regular fixture on the This Morning sofa, somehow turning her life as a demonised lizard monster into a middlingly successful TV career •
Immigration Street airs Tuesday, 10pm, Channel 4
