How much dope did they smoke to produce a potty show like this?
Drugs rot the brain. They turn smart, sociable types into drooling basket-cases. Just look at the tragic example of ITV: once a cheerful family channel, one whiff of marijuana has left it scraping the barrel’s bottom, unable to tell the difference between entertainment and trash.
Whatever the TV execs may or may not be smoking, they need to detox. Documentary Gone To Pot: American Road Trip (ITV) was a hideous concept, a witless show that managed to be both boring and irresponsible, before taking a violent lurch down into the depths of bad taste.
It started with five of the usual ‘celebrity’ suspects in san Francisco, on a tour bus painted to look like scooby Doo’s Mystery Machine. Three of them — panto dame Christopher Biggins, actress Linda robson and ex-footballer John Fashanu — were veterans of I’m A Celebrity . . . get Me Out Of Here.
Former EastEnders star Pam st Clement and the fifth tripper (darts player turned commentator Bobby george) are no stranger to the Z-list circuit either. The producers tried to kid us these five were hand-picked because they suffered from ailments that might benefit from treatment with medicinal marijuana.
But that fools nobody. They were
BIG TED OF THE NIGHT: Travelling across Estonia in Extreme Railway Journeys (C5), Chris Tarrant tucked into a steaming plate of meat and dumplings. ‘This is bear,’ explained the waitress. Chris yelped, ‘I feel like I’ve just eaten Paddington.’
chosen because they’ll shamelessly do and say anything, especially with a camera pointed at them.
Bobby george, for instance, is the kind of man who doesn’t just tell you about his foot operation — he produces his amputated toe, pickled in vodka and stored in a miniature bottle.
Armed with a doctor’s certificate that they purchased for $100 (£76) via a skype video call with an obliging doctor, the celebs gobbled hash brownies, smoked joints and puffed on bongs. some were tentative, like fitness fiend Fashanu, who could barely bring himself to taste a scoop of hemp-laced ice cream. Others huffed and coughed through more clouds of smoke than Puff The Magic Dragon.
Trouble was, none of them appeared to be enjoying it. The most fun anyone had was a brief giggling fit from Linda, before she dozed off. They dutifully tried foul- tasting tinctures and sat uncomfortably while some stoned nuns rubbed cannabis oil on their bodies, but they were plainly having a wretched time.
And that’s before Biggins and Bobby ate too many pot-drenched potatoes, served by a 94-year-old Italian woman with pink hair.
They were copiously ill on the bus. As coach trips go, I’d rather spend eight hours in a traffic jam with National Express than watch any more of this.
The Boy With The Topknot (BBC2) was nauseating in a different way. sacha Dhawan played successful journalist, sathnam sanghera, who grew up in a sikh household in Wolverhampton, in this one-off adaptation of a real-life memoir.
The writer was desperately pleased with himself — and knew it. self-mockery gave him an opportunity to tell us at least eight times he got a First from Cambridge. The story centred on his discovery that his father suffered from a serious mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia, and had been taking medication for decades.
But because sathnam was so self-absorbed, we didn’t learn nearly enough about it.
His girlfriend (Joanna Vanderham) was just a cardboard device, a fantasy female whose job was to ask the right questions and forgive everything.
she also possessed magical powers, turning up on a railway platform in time to bring the story to a schmaltzy close. Otherwise, we discovered nothing about her. This drama promised a lot, but disappointed.