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).

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!”