TV Previews
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday July 27, 2009
How Not to Live Your LifeABC2, 9pmIt's always exciting to receive the first episode of a new series, especially if it's a comedy, because everyone loves a laugh. But a few minutes into this British sitcom and the excitement had turned to disappointment and halfway through all hope had evaporated.Don (Dan Clark) is a hapless slacker, loathed by his work colleagues and not held in much higher esteem by his recently deceased grandmother, who has left him her heavily mortgaged house. She refers to Don in her will as "dickhead", as does anyone who knows him through her the solicitor doing probate, her nutty neighbour, her domestic carer. Amusing once, slightly obvious twice, just plain lazy a third and fourth (and possibly fifth) time.The show relies on a bold conceit: whenever the situation gets a bit sticky, we are witness to Don's imagination running wild with the possibilities of what not to say or do usually four or five scenarios that momentarily stop the action and are played out in an Ally McBeal-esque fantasy land. All the things one would like to say but can't due to social constraints, or do but can't due to the laws of the land. Clark and cast work hard but even the laugh track seems to be a bit uninterested.The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor?ABC1, 8.30pmThis documentary tells the story of the discovery of 47-million-year-old "Ida" at a fossil fair and her place in interpreting some of our earliest ancestors. The story itself is interesting, taking us through the branches of the primate family tree and trying to find where this previously unknown species fits into the scheme of things.Visually, however, there's not much going on. There is a lot of reliance on panning shots across her resin-preserved body and 3D images recreated from CAT scans, plus some funky graphics zooming in on maps with accompanying sound effects and lots of talking heads and recreated scenes of scientists analysing her hidden secrets.Think brown cardigans in beige offices. It's lifted, however, by the narration of David Attenborough. His avuncular enthusiasm spins out the story into a suspenseful forensic analysis of Ida's significance to our understanding of ourselves.True BeautySeven, 9.30pmNature abhors a vacuum. She must be flat out on this show filling in the huge gaping holes that are the heads of the cocky contestants.Vapid, vacuous and vain, this collection of pretty poseurs clearly met with the Devil before coming on this show and sold him their souls, so lacking are they in charm or humanity.The show tries to redeem itself by being a test of inner (true) beauty by secretly filming the contestants in manufactured situations to test how empathetically they respond. These loathsome specimens are caught ignoring people in distress and each week the two who have failed the day's various challenges end up in the Hall of Beauty a sort of kangaroo court to have their actions interrogated by a washed-up supermodel (a tut-tutting Cheryl Tiegs), a former Miss Teen USA (Vanessa Minnillo) and a simpering stylist (Nole Marin).If you tune in this evening you will hear possibly the only nice guy on the show say, without any hint of irony, sarcasm or self-deprecation: "I want to use these looks for good not evil."
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald