Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
This hackneyed taxi format is enough to drive you mad
Like millions of viewers, I’m a huge fan of Peter Kay’s Car Share and James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke.
I have even enjoyed the odd episode of Gogglebox, although they’ve not done a very good job of replacing old favourites such as Steph and Dom.
But last night I hated those three programmes with a passion.
For if they had not been created, I would not have had to sit through Channel 4’s Taxi Of Mum And Dad. If you missed it, allow me to explain. Channel 4 fixed some cameras in some cars containing parents and their teenage offspring.
The cameras recorded everything that went on – the inane chats, the petty arguments, the forced mateyness, the questionable driving. And when none of those things was happening? Various overly loud attentionseekers totally wrote off their favourite songs – which just happened to play on the radio at exactly the right moment.
The fact that the producers used that singalong trick way too much should tell you how much confidence they had in the rest of the material.
It was really annoying. The footage from inside those cars was shouty and incoherent enough in the first place. To be fair, there were some touching moments, such as 16-year-old Ben’s mum Charlotte showing her obvious pride at the way he dealt with coming out.
Sadly, these were few and far between – plus, I’m afraid my many years of watching Gogglebox have taught me to have a healthy cynicism about the spontaneity of such moments in time.
All the best to Channel 4 if they do try to make a full series of this, of course.
But I’m afraid that for me Taxi Of Mum And Dad is a total non-starter.