"I'm Dawn Porter," says Dawn Porter at the beginning of every episode of Dawn Porter: Extreme Wife. "And for the last four years I've been single. It's not that I don't want a relationship. I do. But, before I take the plunge, I plan to experience some of the most extreme ways women find love and live with men."
You'll already know a lot about Dawn Porter if you've seen her recent slew of BBC3 shows including Dawn Goes Lesbian - where she pretended to want to experiment sexually with women but was horrified every time an actual female came near her - and Dawn Goes Naked – during which she went semi-naked in the name of female empowerment and achieved nothing but wolf whistles. (She seemed quite pleased.)
When I say you'll know a lot about her, I mean she manages to pack an awful lot of incredibly superficial information – "I'm tired. This is hard. Gosh, I don't know if I'll be able to do this." – into her shows under the guise of investigative journalism. You learn plenty about her current state of mind, but little or nothing about the "cultural experience" at hand.
In her current Channel 4 series, she tries out different lifestyles for a whole week to see if they're right for her. Or, as she put it in last night's show about Japanese geisha girls, she wants to see if dedicating her life to serving men could really make her happy.
Her favourite things "in the whole world" are sushi, sex and karaoke, so she's really delighted to be in Japan. She's soon ensconced in a local spa resort, knocking back the beers with some Japanese businessmen. "What if someone tries to touch my bottom?" she giggles to her geisha tutors. Wow, she's really cracking those subjects open like walnuts, isn't she?
From there, she heads to the heart of historic Kyoto to spend a week living in a geisha house, learning their delicate manners and precise ceremonies. After five minutes of her first kneeling lesson, she tells us that it's hard kneeling down for so long and her legs hurt. From then on, she sulks her way through sock-folding ("I am trying."), having her hair done ("I thought I'd look prettier.") and going on a rickshaw ride with an unfortunate male client ("I'm glad that's over," she says in hearing distance of the poor sap.)
At this point it would have been good to get some historical background, a bit of social history perhaps, any information at all that didn't involve her own discomfort. But no. The one or two cross-examinations she did manage to get were superficial to the point of shaming Fearne Cotton. She conducted one entire interview with a geisha girl while gazing happily at her own reflection in a mirror.
Where other interviewers gently ease and tease information from their subjects, Porter is the white noise preventing you from making out anything they might have to say.
She comes to the earth-shattering conclusion that the geisha life might NOT be for her. Still, three down, one to go. Perhaps next week's foray into polygamy will be her thing.
When did "authored" documentary making become so incredibly shallow? I'll concede that not all factual programmes can be fronted by humourless scientists, but it's surely a mistake to think that Porter's insubstantial shoulders can carry anything more than a small handbag, let alone a four-part Channel 4 series on sexual and cultural diversity.
Is it just me who feels insulted by this dreadful series?
