Taming tyrannical toddlers – it’s hardly rocket science
The Scott household in Northamptonshire made the Labour Party look harmonious. Headbutting and biting. Pinching, punching, spitting and kicking. Could Norlandtrained Kathryn Mewes, aka The
Three Day Nanny (Channel 4), tame the two toddlers who were enjoying a reign of terror and put the parents back in power?
According to Mewes, the two- and three-year-old tyrants exhibited some of the most extreme behaviour she had ever witnessed. It turned out they were taking their cues from an ineffectual father and an anxious mother who never told them off – even when they were clonking her over the head with a hammer.
Mewes, patiently but firmly, taught the struggling parents a new strategy, where bad behaviour was punished and good behaviour was rewarded. It was hardly rocket science but it quickly worked. Within hours, the boys were playing happily, while their parents were able to step back, sit down and look on adoringly.
This was efficient, formulaic TV: present problem, solve problem, happy ending, roll credits. Yet it also felt dated – and not just because of Mewes’s Norland trappings (tweed blazer, neck scarf, evacuee suitcase, prim manners). This series belongs to a bygone era of trouble-shooting factual shows: Mary Queen of Shops, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and Supernanny, of which this is a wan imitation. You can understand why Channel 4 has decided to bury it in its summer schedules.
The main problem lies in the fact that Mewes, unlike Gordon Ramsay, Mary Portas or, indeed, Jo Frost from
Supernanny, lacks charisma. Mewes is too meek and mild, too normal, too darned nice. Watching her do her work was neither involving nor entertaining.
Nor are the subjects ever entirely sympathetic. Delinquent toddlers with flaky parents aren’t easy to root for. You want to give them a piece of your mind, perhaps even a clip around the ear. And then turn your attention to the children.
It was the third episode of relative-reuniting blub-fest Long Lost Family (ITV), and this series continued to wring out viewers. If a health crisis results from saltwater exiting Britons’ bodies, we know who to blame: presenters Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell for their sterling if heart-tugging work bringing estranged loved ones back together.
This instalment told two stories of people separated from their mothers. Deborah Ozturk, 50, from Essex, was longing to find her birth mother, an impoverished teenager who gave her away as a baby – not for recriminations but to thank her for the sacrifice she made and for hand-picking her happy adoptive family.
Campbell traced her to the other side of the world – just outside Adelaide in South Australia – a task made even harder by the fact that she’d changed her name from Joan to Kate. Believing she was a bad mother who didn’t deserve a family, she had no more children.
When Deborah and Kate finally met, they couldn’t stop hugging and gazing. Champagne on the table between them remained untouched – they were savouring something far sweeter.
Meanwhile, retired farmer Ray Jones was desperate to make up for a missed opportunity 60 years ago. He had “Barnardo’s Boy” tattooed on his arm, having been put into care aged two. Tragically, his mother Myra had written to Ray in his teens, desperate to reconnect, but he never received the letter.
Myra was long dead but it turned out that Ray had a half-brother named Arthur in Liverpool. The pair were the spit of each other – silverhaired gents in black leather jackets. Arthur revealed that Myra had a vision of Ray on her deathbed – and that he had 11 other siblings. They were last seen organising a family reunion and Ray went from “selfcontained and self-sufficient” to part of a huge clan. “I feel I can open up at last and say this is who I am,” he said gratefully.
I’ve watched all three instalments so far this series and am averaging three cries per episode. I might need to take a week off Long Lost Family
viewing duties to replenish my electrolyte levels.