Occasionally, a TV programme sneaks on to the schedule and so easily settles into the cultural climate it’s clear that in years to come, episodes will be studied for their historic value. You don’t need me to tell you that Snog, Marry, Avoid is one obvious example. Come Dine With Me is another. Now I tentatively suggest that all Mary Portas ventures are added to the archive. Mary Portas is a woman who knows what works, and sticks to it. Namely, gliding into poorly performing stores, focusing her laser vision on messy rails and herding gorm-depleted business owners towards retail modernity.
Mary Portas: Secret Shopper (Tuesday, 8pm, Channel 4) – ie The One Where She Rhapsodises About Customer Service – follows a familiar formula, but with the scintillating addition of secret cameras. Keshu, owner of Hallmark Food Store, is a kind man, having taken Dean under his wing when he was kicked out of school aged 14. Now 30, Dean has risen up the ranks to supervisor of the shop in Burnham, near Slough. Keshu, I strongly feel, should be letting his hair down and getting fat on the spoils of retirement. Instead, he’s in the storeroom of his mini-market, dreams crumbling as he watches CCTV footage of Dean swanning about saying things like, “That Keshu’s a cheeky bitch; a man’s not allowed to be 25 minutes late?!” in front of horrified grannies. Meanwhile, the staff Dean are supposed to be supervising run amok with trolleys, let produce rot on the shelves, and stage small-scale food fights.
Mary, I’m delighted to say, isn’t having a bar of it. It’s testament to her fearsome sway that with a power bob, steely benevolence and some real talk, Mary Portas has marketed herself as the relatable face of capitalist dystopia. It works. I truly believe she doesn’t want Keshu to go under, or the villagers of Burnham, imprisoned by rural bus timetables, to suffer the indignity of Dean motivating his workforce by means of a Dean-centric call and response in the biscuit aisle.At the core of Mary’s detoxification of the Hallmark brand is a name-change to Burnham Village Store. Keshu is advised to “focus his selection”, which translates to sweeping all the miscellaneous tat into a bin bag, and replacing it with rustic vegetable crates, blackboards and staff in grey aprons. Mary asks Keshu what the store can offer. “Videos come to mind,” he replies, and with that Keshu’s daughter Ash – bright, young, and wasted at the in-store Post Office – is promoted to product manager.
At L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, where Mary has taken Dean, convinced he can be inspired into leadership by role playing maître d’, a problem emerges. With an order pad in his hand and a genuinely heartbreaking look of terror sinking down his face, Dean tells Mary he can’t read or write. It’s classic reality TV bait-and-switch, but Christ on a Pashley do I lap it up. Mary, all-round don that she is, gets it. “I’ve got more respect for him,” she whispers, while, out of shot, a researcher frantically Googles adult-literacy tutors and composes some hasty emails re: production company purse strings.
Back in Burnham, it’s the big day: Burnham Village Stores opens to customers. Their noses are pressed to the window and its display featuring words such as “Hi!” “Mmm” and “Independent” in gratuitously cursive script. Ash arranges some aubergines in a basket. Mary, proudly weeping, faces the challenge of where to put Dean’s carefully hand-written sign. Next to the freshly ground coffee? Or leaning against the oatcakes? It’s an emotional rollercoaster. Trickily, the joy to be felt at the transformative powers of profile-raising, profit-boosting nationwide TV coverage relies on ignoring the inconvenient truth that, if this is a snapshot of Britain, it’s a bleak one. But for now, everyone’s happy. Then, at the end of the programme, Keshu reports on how things have been going. Three months after Mary left, Tesco opened a hangar-sized superstore nearby, he tells us, looking more in need of a nice long sit down than ever.
