Idiot Boxing

Each week, Clash’s resident small-screen obsessive Adam Carroll-Smith will be panning for gold in television’s murky waters, and bringing you a selection of the shiniest things to have caught his eye.

Television is quite simply the greatest invention in the history of mankind – bar none. In fact, the only thing that would tempt me to alter that opinion is if someone invents non-fattening pizza or Walkers decide my “Peanut Butter and Jam” flavour crisps are worth mass-producing. Until then, telly stands alone as the high watermark of human creativity.

Anyway, each week I’ll be running through the good stuff, both old and new, on offer on your shiny tellybox. First up this week, after a self-imposed exile from reality programming, I welcomed American Inventor(Virgin1) back into my living room.

Now, I know what you’re thinking – lauding television as the world’s greatest invention whilst simultaneously recommending that you watch an American reality show is a bit like proclaiming Bob Dylan as pop’s greatest genius and then recommending you check out 'Down In The Groove', but come on – a show featuring wiry, crazy-eyed rednecks in silver spacesuits (yes, really) inventing clothes for cars (yes, really) has got to be worth a moment of everybody’s time. As one poor rejected sap pleaded, as he saw his invention dismissed: “Yes, it’s absurd…but it’s viable”.

‘Absurd’ and ‘viable’ are two words that immediately spring to mind when describing the plot of an average Jonathon Creek episode. An old and sadly now retired show it may be, but ahead of this week’s ‘Creek Week’ (UKTV Gold), you’d be foolish not to reacquaint yourself with what was a vastly underrated show. The plots do tend to drift predictably into avenues of complete madness, and the show is guilty of the same murder mystery clichés as every such show, but in Alan Davies the show has an immensely likeable lead presence.

A pleasant and likeable character of Mr. Davies ilk would greatly diminish the entertainment value of my last show for your consumption this week, More 4’s Come Dine With Me. For the uninitiated, CDWM sees five ordinary people (or typically, a posho, a chav, a very camp chap, a Mumsy type, and a gobby person) cooking for one another over the course of a week, with the individual deemed to have produced the best meal winning the princely sum of £1000. In reality, the winner is the person who manages to avoid upsetting anyone too much, or avoids simply being an irredeemable bore or an arrogant twat – two personality types which seem to be present on every show. Bitching abounds on the show, and it’s not unusual to find one of the contestants having a quiet sob in their kitchen when their pineapple and crab paste crumble is drunkenly slammed as “shit”, because shockingly enough, they are always very determined to win.

This week’s slightly chavvy contestant was actually a bit of a joy, and she fantastically summed up the lengths the competitors will go to, to claim the prize. “The starter was subliminal”, she remarked, her mouth ringed with red wine stains. Now that would truly be an invention to rival the television.