In the pink? Dawn Goes Lesbian on BBC3. Photograph: BBC
The trend for personal challenge programmes, in the model of Super Size Me, seems to be experiencing a resurgence in the UK. In the last couple of months we've had a female journalist not washing for a month, Dave Gorman travelling across America not giving money to big corporations and presenter Dawn Porter not wearing clothes in the name of "real women".
In Dawn Goes Lesbian (tonight on BBC3), Dawn Porter pushes the conceit too far. She spends a month living with three lesbians to see if that drunken threesome she had a couple of years back might mean she has the capacity to be gay. A valid experiment or a frivolous ego trip? Without giving too much away, Dawn spends most of the show recoiling in horror every time a woman comes near her. Except, surprise surprise, when she is drunk. Then she snogs a couple just so the whole month hasn't been for nothing.
It's an entirely cynical ploy to tease male viewers from start to finish. As was her experiment last week in Dawn Gets Naked, in which she learned to strip and did a burlesque performance in the name of "real women." Neither of these programmes was about its proclaimed subject. They're about the winsome presenter and her ability to flirt, not with other women, but with the lens. And there's more to come: Porter is currently in LA filming four programmes for Channel 4 in which she'll live as four different kinds of wife, including a Geisha and a Mormon.
Likewise Dave Gorman's American adventure, although enjoyable, was merely a stunt to showcase his winning personality. We learned nothing about big businesses' grip on the US that we didn't already know from other sources.
Have you had enough of these stunt-driven shows? Would you prefer to see a return to television programmes presented by experts who can actually teach you something, rather than an amiable everywoman/man who might be fun down the pub but is otherwise an empty vessel?
Isn't it time that we let the James Burkes and Professor Heinz Wolffs of this world back onto our screens? Or do you really prefer your info-tainment coated in sugar and served up by someone with a cute fringe? It is only TV after all.
