Wonka saga made me laugh – like a horrid Roald Dahl aunt

Wonka: The Scandal That Rocked Britain Channel 5, Saturday ))))) Palm Royale Apple TV, Wednesday )))))

You do have to admire Channel 5 for the speed at which it can turn shows around. ‘Willy’s Chocolate Experience’ opened and shut in Glasgow on February 24 and here is the documentary, Wonka: The Scandal That Rocked Britain, three weeks later. I wondered: did they have the camera crew assembled before the last child had even stopped crying? I also wondered if a more accurate title might have been: Wonka: The Scandal That Amused Britain, For A Bit. (Unless, that is, you felt ‘rocked’?)

I found it amusing. I know, children were gutted and parents were out of pocket, but I greatly enjoyed every moment from afar. I think I must be mean. If I ever made it into a Roald Dahl book I’d definitely be a horrid aunt.

I also greatly enjoyed that story from a few years back when two fellas put on a Lapland show in the New Forest, featuring one plastic polar bear and a broken ice rink. They went to prison for fraud but it still makes me laugh just thinking about it.

Perhaps an even more accurate title might have been: Wonka: The Scandal That Will Amuse Britain For A Surprisingly Long While, In Fact.

The Glasgow experience promised to deliver ‘a magical place’ and a ‘world of pure imagination’ with edible flowers, bustling Oompa Loompas and a chocolate river. But the reality was a half-empty warehouse with a desultory bouncy castle at one end, tacky vinyl wall hangings and a chocolate river that amounted to a footlong piece of painted cardboard. Parents, who had paid £35 per head, rightly felt they’d been Oompa Loompa Dupety Duped, and protested angrily. The police were called and actually turned up, this not being a burglary. The attraction, if we can call it that, had closed its doors by lunchtime and that was that. Except it wasn’t. It went viral here, then across the world, and broke the internet and all that.

This documentary was, as we are given to saying in the journalism trade, mostly a ‘cuttings’ job. If you’re a mean old aunt (like me) you’ll have diligently followed the story and will know this is essentially a rehash of what’s already out there, including interviews with parents and ‘the cast’, who were given their AI-generated, gobbledygook scripts the night before and who’ve already been all over daytime TV.

But the show did have the one scoop, and that was a sit-down with Billy Coull, who had organised the event. But all in all, it didn’t amount to more than four or five minutes and it wasn’t at all satisfying as he was never challenged. ‘I am not a scam artist or con man,’ he says at the outset, which some might consider rich, particularly in light of the fact that no one, as far as I can gather, has been refunded yet (800 tickets selling at £35 each amounts to £28,000 – not bad for a morning’s work).

Coull doesn’t make eye contact and blames anyone and anything but himself. The projectors didn’t turn up. The electricity at the venue was not suitable for his needs. The warehouse was too big.

The interviewer does not interject with: ‘You didn’t check the measurements of the venue before you hired it?’ Or: ‘Nothing was in place but you opened the doors anyway?’ Still, you have to award this programme three stars if only for the turnaround. It was so fast that, it seems, Channel 5 didn’t even have time to pick up a clapperboard. Instead, someone would just clap hands in the interviewee’s face. Quick, cheap television. For that, there is no other channel to beat it.

I had been excitedly anticipating Palm Royale as its pre-publicity gave off White Lotus vibes, and also Big Little Lies vibes, and look at the cast: Kristen Wiig, Laura Dern, Allison Janney, Ricky Martin (truly living his best life) and Carol Burnett. Sure, her character is ‘embolised’ and in a coma, but it’s still Carol Burnett. You can’t fail with a cast like this, I thought, wrongly.

OK, in a nutshell: it’s set in 1969 with Wiig playing Maxine Simmons, a small-town beauty queen who is desperate to infiltrate Palm Royale, an exclusive, high-society club in Palm Beach and, to this end, will lie and steal and manipulate. Yet, I think, we are meant to be rooting for her, as the plucky underdog, as a kind of Becky Sharp. But whereas you understood what drove Becky Sharp, Maxine’s motivation has yet to amount to more than rapacious greed and status-seeking. I didn’t root for Maxine. Or not root for her. Mostly, I was just bored by her.

The series kicked off with three episodes (of ten – ten!), and while there were many incidents, nothing actually happens. Maxine is snobbishly rebuffed. Maxine finds a way back. It’s that, over and over, without any true plot development, while the rest of the cast all play cartoon characters.

Most unforgivably, given Wiig’s comedy chops, the script’s not witty and there are no good jokes. It is also confusing. Maxine’s husband, it turns out, is the estranged nephew of Norma Dellacorte (Carol Burnett in that coma), the richest woman in town. So why is Maxine still using her maiden name, and not Dellacorte if she wants to impress? Why don’t we even know she is married until episode two? Her husband is a commercial airline captain, but still they can’t afford their motel bill?

It is beautiful to look at – the clothes are exquisite – but this a tiresome mess otherwise. Kids, here’s an important lesson for you: adults can be disappointed too. It’s not as fun. But it happens.