‘MORE CHOPS THAN A BUTCHER’S SHOP’
A new Channel 5 reality show starts tonight – Our Valley Family. Nathan Bevan hadd a sneak preview – this is his verdict
IFEEL like the old battle axe in that episode of Fawlty Towers who loudly complains about not liking the view from her room. “Well, may I ask what you expected to see out of a Torquay hotel window?” asks John Cleese’s put-upon hotelier, sarcastically. “Sydney Opera House perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon?”
Similarly, I don’t know what I expected to see when I sat down to watch tonight’s new Channel Five reality show set in a Rhondda terraced street. Something that, for once, isn’t lazy and contrived in its depiction of everyday life in the South Wales Valleys perhaps?
Nah, don’t be daft, Nathan. After all, them’s the rules, apparently.
Billed as the “anti-TOWIE”, the makers of Tonypandy-set Our Valley Family promised an antidote to the superficial fakery of MTV’s The Valleys and its ilk.
But those expectations were crushed from the off when a disclaimer popped up on screen stating, “while the family featured on the programme is real, some storylines have been produced with their collaboration”.
As a result, this so-called “real-life sitcom” – previously titled Our Happy Valley Life and Our Girls In The Valleys – ended up feeling as manufactured as those series it’s meant to spurn.
OK, so instead of boob jobs and Botox, we got a lesson on why you shouldn’t drink blue Slush Puppies while sporting blindingly white clipin veneers. And, rather than blingy flash cars, the opening scene showed someone giving a masterclass in how to parallel park a mobility scooter on a busy road.
But, no matter how much you swap TOWIE-isms such as “well jel” for a “wossa marra, mun” or an “I’ll be there now, in a minute,” the same integral problem about “realness” remains.
Namely, if you stick a TV camera in an ordinary person’s living room and tell them to just be themselves, it’s only going to result in them being anything but.
The pressure to “play up”, to be funny or spawn the next big internet meme will always win out.
Therefore, any sense of genuineness goes out the window.
And, while the Fisher family themselves are no doubt lovely people who signed up for this with the very best of intentions, the fact that Our Valley Family is only two episodes long means we’re unlikely to ever find out who they really are.
Instead we’re left with rough sketched caricatures – houseproud mum Paula who’s forever doing the cleaning, wannabe rock star dad Anthony singing Dolly Parton at the top of his voice from nine to five, elderly Nanny and Dado next door who are totally befuddled by the modern world and the bolshy cousin from down the road who’s got more chops than a butcher’s shop window.
Seventeen-year-old Shania, on the other hand, is lost in a hormonal reverie of boys and nail gloss, while elder sister Nikita munches mountainous Greggs breakfasts and has absolutely no clue about how a Hoover works.
It’s a shame, because you can see what the show’s creators were going for – a pinch of The Royle Family’s schlubby charm, a sprinkle of Gavin & Stacey’s pep and a side serving of the kind of quick-fire witticisms you get from the Welsh bloke on Gogglebox with the cricked neck.
Yeah, that’s him – Dave.
Then just pop in the oven and – hey presto – comedy gold. Except it wasn’t. What came out was just halfbaked.
Don’t get me wrong though, parts of it were funny, even if unintentionally so – like when Anthony decided to turn up at a kids’ party singing The Green Green Grass of Home whilst dressed as the non-waxed half of Beauty & the Beast.
Leering out from behind the community hall curtain wearing a goatlike mask and horns, and looking more like something from the 1968
Christopher Lee film The Devil l Rides Out than n anything Disney y ever doodled, his s appearance e resulted in several al little ones running g to their mothers rs floods of terrified tears.
The only believable moment t came when, with Nanny having decided on an early night, Dado raided the fridge and was cracking open a can of beer up the back garden before her stairlift had even reached the landing.
And, to be perfectly honest, after 45 minutes of Our Valley Family, I felt like joining him. in