“The biggest problem with this deafening, joyless cash-dash is the eponymous presenter”
Beast Games, Amazon Prime Video
“The biggest problem with this deafening, joyless cash-dash is the eponymous presenter. Mr Beast is James Stephen Donaldson, a 26-year-old North Carolina university dropout who made his name posting stunts on YouTube (including a video where he spent an entire day counting to 100,000). That brash, shouty persona – he is evidently unfamiliar with the concept of an “indoor voice” – may go down a treat on social media. Under the withering lights of a TV studio, his dorky anti-charisma creates a huge void which the flashy production values (and Prime Video’s $100 million budget) cannot fill.”
The Great British Sewing Bee Celebrity Christmas Special, BBC1
“It was a very jolly programme, though, with most of the humour coming not from the host Sara Pascoe but the comedian Fatiha El-Ghorri. “If you look in the bin there, you’ll find my will to live,” she said at one point. There was also humour from Charlotte Crosby, who found celebrity via Geordie Shore and has naturally funny bones, revealing that she had ironed her skirt that morning with her hair straighteners and thought ironing clothes was a “thing of the past”. Hear, hear. I rarely iron anything. Esme Young was in a playful mood. “I love a Christmas sausage,” she said. Steady on, Esme.”
Miracles, Sky Max
“Miracles roams the same emotional terrain as Noel’s Christmas Presents used to do at this time of year, before Edmonds found cosmic ordering and a higher calling. The big difference – which becomes increasingly conspicuous as the programme goes on – is that the good people and the charities to which they are dedicated do not get any reward other than being shown a few magic tricks. This feels unmistakably off. The feeling crystallises – for this viewer at least – into marked dissatisfaction when, at the end of the final (spectacular) stunt, involving Frayne walking on empty air between a building and a huge Christmas tree to light the latter, the assembled good people are given presents that turn out to be wooden boxes inscribed with inspirational messages. It leaves a mean, sour taste in the mouth. It would have cost so little to end things differently.”
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