On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 01:38:38 +0000, geoff wrote:

In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes
Richard Faulkner wrote:


The programme is a joke, and actually misleadingly encourages people
to think they can do something which they can't.

Actually, I think it aptly demonstrates that it takes more than a
couple

of hairdressers to make ANYTHING from property improvement.


Their profit would not actually cover rheir living expenses so far..

The attraction of the program is that you want to see them fail big time

Unfortunately, if they had done so, it wouldn't have gone out would it

Well, I don't know that they HAVEN'T failed! I mean, I don't quite see
how this series so far can be seen as a SUCCESS, and the opposite of
success is, well, you know what it is. To me now, in hindsight, it
looks increasingly like the product of a hip, flip, cool, young
production team Somewhere In London, which cooked up the idea to have
two excitable young things (in Colin's case, at least) swan their way
through seven properties and Make A Million. Consider: Two luvvies,
one down-to-earth builder bloke; the magic number seven (not 23, 18,
or, more realistically, 100); the even more magic number "one million"
(shades of Chris Tarrant here); loads of aggro; fantastic end results
in terms of the actual design work; fantastic rolling advertisement
for Justin and Colin.

The most interesting stories about this programme would be from the
behind-the-scenes planning. A story of how the programme was conceived
and made, warts and all, would be far more rivetting than the actual
episodes. For example, what was the real reason the builder bloke
pulled out? Did he just get sick and tired of the two boys throwing
their toys out of the pram? I would have jacked it in after the first
one if I were him. Why did the producers wait until the episode in
which he pulled out to tell us he was off? (Okay, we were given a
brief "taster" in the trailer the previous week.)

As these programmes progress through their allotted hour, one can see
the producers' - and scriptwriters' - minds at work. All such
programmes comprise deliberate peaks and troughs, the most blatant of
which currently is the "No Going Back" series on Channel 4. It is
almost laughable how one can predict with uncanny accuracy when the
next ad break (on ITV/Five/Channel 4) is coming up, as there will be a
sudden downturn in the family's fortunes. And then the ads are over,
and, magically, the problem is solved! Everything is once again
sweetness and light, and the intrepid family are now marching onward
and upward on the sunlit uplands of progress... yada yada yada.

Another 15 minutes and boom! Another calamity, another ad break. And
to think that there will be many thousands of viewers all lapping it
up and nodding sagely into their cardigans, "How brave, how very, very
brave..."

MM