Looking good... Make Me a Supermodel.
A TV critic once compared the 2000 US election to the Channel Five schedules - all Bush and Gore. And nine years after former programme controller Dawn Airey made the potty-mouthed promise that her channel was about "the three Fs - films, fucking and football", the station is still dismissed by most viewers as, well, a bit rubbish, relying on flaccid porn and cheap imports to fill the schedules. Yes, there are still days when a Five marathon might leave a bad taste in your mouth - but those days are dwindling.
As well as classic cult fare (Russ Meyer seasons, documentaries where John Waters introduces his favourite B-movies, investigations into sci-fi hoaxes), and car-crash entertainment such as Keith Chegwin's Naked Jungle (voted the worst British TV programme of all time), Five has cornered the market in quality schlock.
Asbo Teen to Beauty Queen, in which nine "tearaway teens" transform themselves into pageant princesses, is the battered Mars bar of reality TV. Last week, on this very blog, Natasha Walter argued that ATTBQ and its fellow transformation TV shows are exploitative, anti-feminist trash. But compared to Channel 4's Ten Years Younger, where an over-plucked under-sexed hate monster sends tired women into plastic surgery before parading them in front of shoppers to judge their laughter lines, Five's etiquette agenda seems nigh-on righteous.
Anyway. The schedule. Make Me A Supermodel was America's Next Top Model without the bother of Tyra Banks' over-demonstrative facial muscles.
And with all the minority sports (Ironman South Korea!), classy soaps (Tripping Over, by the guy who did Cold Feet), proper drama (CSI, Law and Order, Prison Break) and surprise titless programming, such as tomorrow night's Glories Of Islamic Art, with no nipples in it whatsoever, there's no need to keep flicking.
Cable schmable - Five is the new Four! Who's with me?
