TV Review Blood Sweat and Takeaways
By Sian Brewis
They say travel broadens the mind, and you’d have to hope something would do the trick for the bunch of spoilt brats in Blood, Sweat and Takeaways (BBC 3, 9pm).
-
Blood, Sweat and Takeaways
Sent to south east Asia to discover more about where their takeaways come from, they act like six Veruca Salts, happy to scweam and scweam until they are sick.
“Their houses are like our garden sheds,” they trill from their air-conditioned van. Until it stops, and they realise this is where they will be living for the next week, working in an Indonesian tuna factory.
The fast-food addicts are breathtakingly obnoxious to the poor families who have agreed to put them up.
Politics student Manos, all swagger and stupid statements like “exploitation? So be it” asks to use the toilet. He’s shown outdoors and promptly runs about retching.
The girls were also shocked, not least that their Boden catalogue wardrobe did not accessorise with the factory whites. One lad, Josh, cried because there were lizards.
They’re all appalled by working in the factory, where workers toil in 90-degree heat for three quid a day. “You can’t talk!” gasps gobby Stacey.
After collecting their wages, they buy sweets and give less than £1 to their host, so she can visit her children, on the other side of the island. “That’s such a nice feeling,” muses Jess. They didn’t offer to give her any more, though.
Dollhouse (SciFi channel, 9pm) is the new show by the bloke who did Buffy. And starring that one who was Faith in Buffy, too.
It’s kind of Total Recall meets Quantum Leap: Eliza Dushku is a “doll” called Echo in some kind of freaky spa hotel. Kept in a vegetative state, the dolls are programmed with different personalities and sent on paid-for “missions” where she will, doubtless, always save the day.
There’s plenty of all-action karate-kick quipping here, but the writing’s nowhere near as sharp or the characters as good as Buffy so far. I hope there’s more to it than Quantum Leap in a vest top.
Worried boss man: “How close are you going to cut it?” Computer geek: “Within seconds of their lives!” Da da daah!
It’s Knight Rider (SciFi channel, 8pm), but not as we know it. This Michael Knight is an
ex-Iraq vet; the car’s voiced by Val Kilmer and there’s now a top-secret fortress lair stuffed full of gadgets and women FBI agents who look like models.
There was so much silliness it was difficult to find a favourite, but you’d have to go some way to beat this line: “You have to get his thumb back at all costs!”
3 Comments
by Emma, Warrington
Wednesday, May 20 2009, 11:36AM
“I think it very harsh to label all as 'Spoilt Brats' and to say that all were obnoxious I would strongly disagree. As for Josh crying over lizards I believe if you re watch the episode you would clearly see they were tears of maybe reality kicking in / tiredness and at which point he was speaking to his partner and mother of his child for whom he loves and was missing dearly!!!. Don't lets catergorise the group as one person!.”
by Dan Factor, London
Wednesday, May 20 2009, 10:19AM
“Blood Sweat and Takeaways misses the route causes of exploitation of workers in the the third world.
Rather than examine the political system which leads to poor people in developing countries living on poverty wages and working in appaling conditions it holds consumers in the West accountable for the plight of third world workers.
Sending "spoilt brats" to work in factories in third world countries may satisfy the class hatred of the liberals who make such programmes as this but it won't change the capitalist system which puts profit before people and makes our society rely on food and other products produced by slave labor.
Only by challenging the corperations, bosses and governments who permit such exploitation to go on will things change.”
by Scott, Leicester
Wednesday, May 20 2009, 10:00AM
“Manos is an idiot granted, but there is only one way to deal with bullies like Olu, if he tried to push me through a window he'd get a head butt straight on his nose!!!”