Bet the house on chaos
BARELY a week goes by these days when Channel 4 isn’t bringing us yet another of its social experiments. I say “these days” but actually it’s been this way for years. Shows where people swap wives, shows where people fake their professional credentials, shows where idealists attempt to set up their own self-sufficient society, miles from anywhere (that one went particularly well…), even a show – can you believe this? – where preening, self-obsessed ninnies are shut away for weeks in a house in Hertfordshire with dozens of cameras gawping at their every move.
I think there was even a Channel 4 show a few weeks ago in which a troubled couple agreed to undergo a hypnotic procedure that entirely erased their memory of one another, to see if they could then fix their relationship by seemingly meeting afresh.
I may have just dreamt that though. I hope I did. I’m fairly sure I didn’t.
Anyway, the reason I mention all this is because we have yet another social experiment starting tonight, called ALONE AT HOME (C4, 8pm). I suspect the makers really wanted to call it Home Alone, just legally weren’t allowed to because effectively that’s what we’re dealing with here.
What would happen, it seeks to discover, if parents left their kids to their own devices for days on end? Giving them the run of the house, letting them set their own rules etc.
It’s a question that needs answering (it isn’t really but let’s pretend it is, just to give this show some purpose) because British mums and dads are apparently the most anxious in Europe.
At least, that’s what a recent survey apparently reports. A survey conducted by, don’t ask me, presumably the Department Of Spurious Surveys or suchlike.
Anxious, that is, in the sense that they’re overbearing, overcontrolling, scared to leave their kids just to get on with things, maybe get into scrapes but learn from them etc. Something along those lines.
So each week a different parental pair will step back and do what comes unnaturally: disappear for a long weekend while their offspring stay at home and… well, that’s the big question. What will the kids get up to once relieved of any rules or supervision? Throw a wild party? Trash the joint? Forget to feed the cat?
First up we have Surrey parents Natalie and Dan, leaving kids Millie (right), 16, and Laurel, 13, to their own devices.
Given £70 each to last the full stretch, the girls will need to buy their own food, feed themselves, get themselves to school and back and pay to fix the dishwasher. Actually, they probably won’t be made to do the last of those things, because it’s only when their parents return, three nights later, that they find out you’re not meant to put Fairy liquid in it. Elsewhere, in CORONATION STREET (ITV, 7.30pm and 8.30pm), parents Steve and Tracy are told by daughter Amy that they can’t get back together unless they agree to the terms of a contract she’s had drawn up. Seriously, when will this madness end?