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TV Guilty pleasures.

Started by rjd2, April 07, 2011, 06:45:45 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Subtle Mocking

I'm watching it, but it's bloody awful this year. Cowell seems to absolutely despise it, don't know why he bothered coming back. Ronan had it won before he'd even appeared on stage, I'm afraid.

I'd fuck Holden too, but I wouldn't expect much emoting from her face.

mycroft

I know we're all sickos here, but Holden?! Seriously? That's taking things a bit far, lads.

Although if you can face a lifetime ban from your local fishmonger, I'm sure you could replicate the experience there.

Famous Mortimer

Ice Road Truckers.

It keeps getting better. This new season is hilarious. They show computer-generated simulations of what might go wrong (it never does) and have stuff like "after the break, the ice breaks!", and show a truck disappearing into a lake. After the break, we find out it's a public information film about what doesn't happen to the truckers. But I love it so.

Pepotamo1985

Jeremy Kyle.

Jeremy FUCKING Kyle.

I find the man himself to be a terrifying amalgam of everything I find disagreeable in a person (which is amazing, given the circumstances) and then some, but I'm obsessed with this show. Big time. I used to cycle home early from college to catch the midday omnibus every Thursday. It's just sheer, unadulterated schaden freude rubbernecking from beginning to end, and what could be better than that?

And most of the rubbernecking imbibed comes from just how much of a cunt Kyle is and his perpetual shouting. He's the bastard child of Jerry Springer's tamer cousin and Bill O'Reilly, the closest we get to a FOX news pundit in the UK. Of course, watching fat people with bad complexions and regional accents air their dirty laundry in public and being sneered at is entertaining too, but it's not the primary reason I tune in.

Seriously, just watch this;

The Wang on Jeremy Kyle. Part 1 of 2

Jake Thingray

Presumably, I'm the only one who watched that Sapphic thing Candy Bar Girls on Channel 5 last week.

Spiteface

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on April 19, 2011, 04:00:22 PM
Ah, NCIS. Politically, absolutely appalling – America no.1, everyone else sucks (although their terrorists are only Arabs about half the time, from what I remember). Also, all the main cast have murdered at least one person in cold blood. Oh, if you're a woman on the show, chances are you're going to get shot in the head by one of Gibbs' enemies. But it's guaranteed to rip along, not leave you bored and be occasionally good fun.

I only watch it for Abby.

I have no tattoos, and don't intend to get any, but  I love dipping into Miami Ink and LA Ink from time to time.  They never seem to get anyone just coming in drunk though.  It's always some kind of sob story.

AsparagusTrevor

Yeah, I used to like watching Miami Ink but I got bored of all the sob stories, "I've just survived a six year battle with cancer so I want to get a koi fish to commemorate my victory" or "I used to be a drug addict but I've been clean for six years so I want to get a koi fish to commemorate turning my life around" or "I lost my brother six years ago in 9/11 so I want to get a black and grey portrait of him as a koi fish to commemorate his bravery". Never, "I've just lost a bet so now I've got to get some stupid Japanese fish thing tattooed on my forehead."

kngen

Inked is far more entertaining than Miami Ink, LA Ink etc. The tattooists actually seem like the tattooists I know (ie flaky tweakers living from hand to mouth), and while there is the odd sob story, the explanations for the designs tend to go along the lines of "Why did you decide to get a giant flying skull on your chest?" ... "Because I think it looks badass!". And, because its in Vegas and they do walk-ins, there are lots of drunk people demanding ill-advised pieces which the artists only occasionally talk them out of (like the guy that wanted his knob tattooed.)

Angst in my Pants

Quote from: Jake Thingray on July 11, 2011, 05:04:36 PM
Presumably, I'm the only one who watched that Sapphic thing Candy Bar Girls on Channel 5 last week.
No, I did too. Quite interesting, and thankfully not as staged as this recent influx of 'The Only Way is Essex' type shows.

Kaiser

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on June 21, 2011, 03:45:41 PM
Ice Road Truckers.

It keeps getting better. This new season is hilarious. They show computer-generated simulations of what might go wrong (it never does) and have stuff like "after the break, the ice breaks!", and show a truck disappearing into a lake. After the break, we find out it's a public information film about what doesn't happen to the truckers. But I love it so.

Ice Road Truckers is mine as well! The new stuff is just amazing, oh the suspense. :D

Catalogue Trousers

It's great to watch the steady decline and fall of those shows like Police Stop! or Police, Camera, Action as they more or less permanently rotate on ITV4. Granted, even at their best they're on the level of Alan Partridge's Crash Bang Wallop What A Video, but as the years pass you can feel the barrel being scraped ever desperately further. Ducklings waddling on a road verge. Some drunk bloke falls off of a bicycle. A solid minute or so of police helicopter footage of a 4 x 4 haphazardly driven by some stoned mong trundling slooooooooowly through a cornfield while the crappest ambient music ever drones on and on and poor Graham Cole frantically tries to convince us that this is mind-blowing action. The schadenfreude is delightful.

Famous Mortimer

I've started with "Bad Girls Club", well, it's on in a window on this screen while I'm typing this. I don't know if it had some even faint ambition to be a sociological experiment in its first series, but it's just 7 women who love to start arguments, plied with booze.

I don't know how long I can stick with it, but it's hilarious in an odd way.

Famous Mortimer

"Franklin and Bash".

Breckin Meyer and Mark-Paul Gosselaar play a couple of lawyers who smirk through life, whose antics in defending their client get them hired by a big firm (headed by Malcolm MacDowell, who apparently sees a lot of himself in the boys). There's straight-laced lawyers, and the entire female staff of the firm (and, indeed, everyone they meet) is model-beautiful.

Basically, they skirt round the edges of professional conduct...but they get the job done, while partying all the time (their house looks like the set of many rap videos). It's entirely empty of moral instruction, or any sense it's set in the same world we all inhabit...but it's loads of fun.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on August 25, 2011, 03:33:46 PM
"Franklin and Bash".

Breckin Meyer and Mark-Paul Gosselaar play a couple of lawyers who smirk through life, whose antics in defending their client get them hired by a big firm (headed by Malcolm MacDowell, who apparently sees a lot of himself in the boys). There's straight-laced lawyers, and the entire female staff of the firm (and, indeed, everyone they meet) is model-beautiful.

Basically, they skirt round the edges of professional conduct...but they get the job done, while partying all the time (their house looks like the set of many rap videos). It's entirely empty of moral instruction, or any sense it's set in the same world we all inhabit...but it's loads of fun.

Cunts

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: BlodwynPig on August 25, 2011, 04:12:07 PM
Cunts
Well, quite. I doubt I shall remember it in my twilight years, but it passes 42 minutes in a perfectly reasonable fashion.

greencalx

New series of DTTB started last night which should be of interest to avid readers of this thread. One can't help feeling the couples are deciding the narrative of the resulting show before they apply these days. But the skydiving was massively ill-judged (though she seemed to like it).

Kishi the Bad Lampshade

The weird thing was how it didn't really seem to fit into the ceremony, it was just the skydiving, then going off to change and getting on with the actual wedding. A weird misstep, given how well he did with the dress and getting her best mate over.

I think marriage is scarier than skydiving.

turnstyle

I assumed DTTB would make an appearance in here this week. Both myself and the future Mrs Turnstyle are big fans, and are currently planning our own wedding. We watch this for 'reference'.

Natually, I always hope that the wedding will fall through, purely because it would make great TV. It almost happened with the Vegas couple.

It does make me wonder if weddings are in fact, a load of old shit. The bride always has totally different opinions on the dress, venue, cake etc, yet the groom will royally fuck it all up, and still get the thumbs up from a gushing bride.

Last night was a prime example. A nose shaped wedding cake and the reception in that grotty working mens club? Kitten toilet seats? Ho ho, I thought, this chap is in trouble! However, before I had finished my butterscotch Angel Delight, she was telling him how wonderful it all was.

What cunts.

Cohaagen

This turned into something a bit longer than I intended, so--um. It's not cool to post essay-length stuff, but I really do simultaneously love and hate this show.

Future Weapons

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/future-weapons/future-weapons.html

Future Weapons is state-of-the-art wank fodder for gun nuts, war fiends, and bedwetting internet soldier-worshippers who are more likely to captain the first manned voyage to Mars than they are to even fall down the pavement cracks in society that lead a young man to enlist in the US military. Each episode is a guaranteed 60 minutes of sanitised weapons grot. Every conceivable implement of modern battle, from the soldier's individual weapon up to theatre-level war-deciding systems, is covered. Being a Discovery show, the focus is almost entirely on US hardware. With the Pentagon's stated aim of being "20 years ahead" of their nearest technological rival - inevitably now the Chinese, who increasingly steal much of said technology - there is no shortage of pickings for the programme to cover, and the overripe fruit collected are presented in a gaudy bombardment of prurient technospeak, restrained boastfulness, barely-hidden chauvinism, and a total lack of geographic, economic, political and social context.

For the biddable meat-sacks that make up the US military's prospectives - the ever-faithful white trash, the Latino desperado, the corn-fed, dead-eyed, yes-ma'am-no-sir'ing shitkickers - and the snivelling, sociopathic 14yr old COD nerds, and the 40+ men who really should know better...for all the audience there is something here to cheese off on right into the terminal phase.

The show is fronted by the 100% heterosexual, ex-Navy SEAL Richard Machowicz, an inoffensive yet nodding and credulous presence who lacks even the imagination and risk to capitalise on that gift of a surname, preferring instead to go by the feeble "Mack". If humans are increasingly becoming the biological weak link in 21st Century techno-war, then (ugh) "Mack" is the lame mule in the show's baggage train begging for a merciful Webley to the temple. A programme like this really requires in its presenter something preferably resembling a human action figure, and it is a shame that not a single synapse in this decidedly un-stealthy dome could match the shameless punnery that spawned his former outfit's absurd moniker (SEa Air Land, by the way)

Although the occasional half-hearted effort is made to cover British or even European systems, generally the the world outside America is treated with the same editorial contempt that colours the rest of the country's factual output: firmly marked as "Here Be Dragons" and left unexplored, lest it turn out that the wogs have produced something good enough to be worthy of attention and so break up the 60-minute flow of Uncle Sam's technological beefcaking. Very much the Australians in this Vietnam War, foreigners are brought to the fore for much the same reasons that wheelchair users are at political marches, and are trundled off quickly before they cover Old Glory in foolishness.

Non-natives in fact appear only as either barely distinguishable and invariably pathetic potential adversaries - with the notable exception of the increasingly not-so-latent hostility towards China - or as plucky, somewhat pitiable allies whose efforts at producing infernal devices are regarded with the patronising approbation given to a small child who manages to draw a chair with less than five legs, or a picture of the family cat that doesn't look like the family dog. The production probably feels ashamed that these second-rate turds even share screen time with American masterpieces of death such as the awesome ATACMS missile, which destroys whole grid squares, or the XM307 automatic grenade launcher that can kill with an airburst at ranges of up to 2km.

But what makes Future Weapons a truly guilty pleasure, in the sense of tangible moral guilt, is that their "reports" can barely even be called puff pieces, and actually resemble extended adverts on behalf of companies whose advertising budgets can sometimes be counted in the tens of millions already, and whose pursuit of The Deal has led them in the past to outright buy generals, ministers, even an entire government cabinet[nb]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_bribery_scandals[/nb]. As for those in-house adverts, as a war freak I have actually seen quite a few of these, and can report that Future Weapons only differs in featuring marginally less bad, stock library rock music, and that there is little of the typical emphasis on embarrassing logos, usually involving snakes.

In terms of editorial rigour the analysis is simple: there is none. The insane costs involved in the production of a modern weapons system, controversial even in a pre-bankruptcy West, are positively ignored. Ugly intrusions by the real world into Discovery Channel techno-wank fantasies are not welcomed. It would be like hearing a porn actor say "I love you" during an intense anal scene. The excesses and corporate bullying of companies of like General Dynamics, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin are tolerated because, like Harley Davidson and Fender, they make a world-beating, prestigious American product.

Every chocolate-covered blob of greasy pork fat is swallowed unquestioningly by the almost certainly fruity Machowicz. He doesn't pause for a moment to question, for example, the absurd Airborne Laser, a $6 billion monstrosity from Boeing so large and power-thirsty it can only be sent aloft in a 747 Jumbo and which will, by the admission of the Pentagon itself, probably never be deployed. And that isn't even one of the really big projects: Boeing spent billions of dollars just to lose the Joint Strike Fighter competition. And since there is nothing America hates more than a loser, Congress tossed them a $40 billion bone by brazenly and illegally changing the rules of an air tanker competition after they'd already awarded the contract to a joint European/US bid. An entire special episode was devoted to the Israeli arms industry, which in the space of 70 years has gone from refurbishing WWII cast-offs to become a net exporter of arms with a research base rivalling that of the UK and France. Did "Mack" even posit an opinion as to why Israel became the most heavily militarised democracy on the planet? Did he fuck. There would have been more chance of him doing the links dressed as Joseph Mengele.

It's details such as this which make the wonderful explosions, slow-mo gatling gun close-ups, and test footage so indigestible. Although I do not apologise for having a hard drive filled with files detailing everything from aborted battlecruiser projects from the early 1920s, to experimental flechette rifles of the Vietnam War, it is difficult to see a love of weaponry and death-causing gadgets in anyone older than 15 as anything other than a troubling character flaw. Believe me, I am not blind to this. Every time I watch, say, some 16mm footage of a flight of Hueys rolling in to attack another gook village I subject myself to the same awful self-questioning I would experience if I began to develop a sneaking admiration for Adolf Hitler, or an interest in my young neice's breast-buds. Ultimately, though, I have decided that in a world where...


  • over 36% of American households possess at least one gun, with the logical inference of at least tens of millions of gun nuts (not even counting the evidence based on their massive and humourless presence on the internet with sites such as AR15.com and the laughably po-faced Internet Movie Firearms Database)
  • their military budget exceeds that of the rest of the world combined
  • their armed forces number 1.5 million under arms

...I doubt that I will be noticed. And anyway, fuck off, you're putting me off my stroke.

Zetetic

tl;dr.
Future Weapons: Magpul Masada (Bushmaster ACR / Remington ACR)
Has text comments by the uploader, so you're not mistaken about whether the issues raised with the M4 apply to other members of the AR series.
(No, actually, thank you for writing that Cohaagen. You also made me watch Bashers, so thanks for that as well.)

Cohaagen

#140
Ha ha, cheers Zetetic.

By the by, it's funny and rather telling how they finally managed to make a good gun out of the M16/M4 by replacing...well, uh, everything except the barrel. Oh, and the MoD is a customer of Magpul now - we've just splashed out a few million on some go-faster plastic rifle magazines. No wonder they're rolling in it. As MegaDave himself once said, peace sells but who's buyin'.

Weaponology is another documental crime against factual programming from the Discovery Channel.

http://military.discovery.com/convergence/weaponology/weaponology.html

...the audience for shows like this largely consisting, I think, of people like this shambling abomination of donor parts from cultural clichés:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Flag-Waving_American_Patriot

The way they try to shoehorn America into every topic, no matter how tenuous the link or historically inappropriate, is as amusingly feeble as it is depressing. It's part of the phenomenon that has the War of 1812 written up as a great victory on the History of the US Armed Forces page, and as an opportunistic and ill-advised piece of adventurism on all the other pages where the grown-ups hang out. A country's martial traditions and history, and modern military projects by extension, are important aspects of its self-image and standing in the world. Most of us can understand that dreadnoughts were seen as embodying a nation's design, manufacturing prowess and self-esteem in the early part of the last century, and how the naval arms race between Britain and Germany contributed to the beginning of the First World War, but don't make the same comparisons or come to similar conclusions today. A country such as Brazil, for example, that is building fucking nuclear submarines and has pretensions toward a globe-spanning blue water navy rather than, say, clean up its appalling slums, violent drug gangs, and rat-people who live on rubbish tips. South Africa maintains its self-sufficient arms manufacturing capability, an Apartheid embargo holdover, during an apocalyptic AIDS epidemic. Iran trumpets every release of reverse-engineered Western equipment as a victory for the motherland, complete with curtain-raising by scruffy-looking generals in mirror shades. And the fucking Indians are buying left, right, centre from America, China, Israel, France, Russia, even the UK, every piece of equipment conceivable as they deploy a patchwork force whose technology will be dismantled and incompetently copied as tomorrow's prestige indigenous product[nb]India's own tank project, the Arjun, has been running for 40 years and still has less than 80 examples in service[/nb].

Series Two is dedicated to the weaponry deployed by "elite forces" from around the world, including our own Royal Marines and, inevitably, the SAS. Comment is frequently sought from military analyst and Vietnam vet, Dr William Atwater, a man who looks like he would deny the ear-collecting allegations (if not the pie-eating ones), and who grudgingly and only occasionally concedes superior training or tactics to the US on a case-by-case basis, and always with the unspoken caveat that America is still overall Number One, always, your just jealyous, and anyway I'm joining these guyz in two years, my daddd was n Dessert Storm, stfu noob.

Quote from: Zetetic on October 15, 2011, 02:12:33 AMYou also made me watch Bashers, so thanks for that as well.

I really had been looking for that for about 15 years, and it was well worth the wait. Fuck, Channel 4 used to put out gems like that without thinking anything of it. What happened? There was another documentary originally shown the same night, a film called Train On The Brain, which was fantastic too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rUnFWIhbME (trailer only)

Dead kate moss

The Bachelor, featuring ex-Mr Charlotte Church Gavin Henson, is my favourite show, and I can't believe it's only get a few weeks left (thus rendering this recommendation quite useless unless you watch the entire series off channel 5's website, which you should.)

If you don't watch, or are unfamiliar with the format, Gavin was presented with 25 girls that he had to whittle down to just one who would get to marry, shag or shag then dump two weeks later. Last episode we were now down to the final 5, and using Gavin's system of eliminating those who weren't there 'for the right reasons' (ie  just to be on the telly, or to get a d-list celeb boyfriend, or has a job he didn't approve of, like being a glamour model) he has left himself with 5, including three glamour models, one who used to go out with one of Blue/was on X-factor and has done some lads mag shoots also, and a Lithuanian virgin.

After meeting the parents, lovely/scary Lithuanian virgin (who had claimed to have two serious relationships previously, that her hymen had apparently survived intact) got the chop, and had to go back to living with her Borat-style family in a scary pitch-black tower-block. Also to go was one of the glamour models, who had been lying about her name for the whole series for some reason. He probably would have kept her, but forcing her to get out her rubbish portfolio including topless shots in front of her family probably meant Gavin felt he'd seen them now, so whatever.

The real attraction of this show is not the girls though, it is Gavin. His technique for weeding out the undesirables has been to say that he prioritises honesty and loyalty, and when they tell him that they are indeed honest and loyal, they pass the test. The episode where he had been told that one of the girls had got off /possibly more with one of the cameramen led to him to put his best detective hat on and get her and the girl who 'couldn't help but tell Gav what happened' together and find out the truth. Although the accused flipped between denial and saying things like 'what's done is done' poor Gav just couldn't compute that one of the girls had to be lying, so instead saved them both because the idea that either of them being dishonest with them just didn't make any sense (they'd both previously said they were honest, you see), like the computer in Wargames undone by the game of noughts and crosses, except more far-fetched.

Gavin is of course allowed to kiss all of the girls, though most seem quite uninterested, but none of them are allowed to fool around with anyone else. Or have got their tits out for page free (as Cawwianne calls it). Unless he really fancies them, then it's ok.

Other 'highlights' include forcing some of the shyer girls to perform a burlesque routine for slavering Gavin, even though at least two said they really didn't want to do it (not because they were shy, but because it was degrading). A nice bachelor would have said afterwards, 'that was a bit of fun, you all were very brave,' instead he said they all had knockout figures and nice bums.

Oh and two girls have walked out of the series when they realised that Gavin was not quite the prize they were hoping for, with his lack of a brain or personality or standards, or his inability to disguise that he had decided early on that it was out of two girls, one of which was the hated Cawianne, the one who probably snogged the cameraman and literally flicks the Vs at the other girls when Gav isn't looking (the other is Layla, who used to do the one from Blue, and is the most obvious in totally not fancying Gavin, but will pretend that she so she wins). The way that Gavin's stock has crashed during the series is a delight, with the final 5 (apart from the virgin, who seemed sweet but could just be after visas for her family) clearly only interested in Gav as a step-up to tabloid exposure or reality shows of their own (they are already more qualified as famous than half the people on 'Celebrity' Coach trip.)

So we go into next week's episode with the final 3 - Layla (who is also a songwriter  - one for a Lisa Stansfield album, and a vague 'all the Ibiza ones' under her belt) and has appeared on X-Factor, and has nice boobs. Then April, a beauty pageant winner who segues the fact that she was bullied at school into every conversation, cries a lot, and who's model page says she does a great comedy routine on local radio with her 'funny accents, a talent sadly not yet showcased on The Bachelor. She also has nice boobs.), and Cawiaane, the scheming helium-voiced nightmare (with nice boobs) who has stuck her tongue down Gav's throat at every conceivable opportunity.

Discernment, thy name is Henson, and I cannot wait for next friday.

CaledonianGonzo

Nice write up, dkm - but shouldn't you be on honeymoon at the moment?

Dead kate moss

Honeymoon has been deferred. Having her mother staying with us for us for a week has made us both just want to do nothing but enjoy our empty house. Also The Bachelor is on next friday and I/we don't want to miss it.

Famous Mortimer

The Vampire Diaries

Because fuck you, it's great. Its first 10 episodes contained more plot than 3 series of any comparable series, and it's fun and stupid and has moody vampires and happy vampires and all that malarkey.

Spiteface

Quote from: kngen on July 12, 2011, 01:52:12 PM
Inked is far more entertaining than Miami Ink, LA Ink etc. The tattooists actually seem like the tattooists I know (ie flaky tweakers living from hand to mouth), and while there is the odd sob story, the explanations for the designs tend to go along the lines of "Why did you decide to get a giant flying skull on your chest?" ... "Because I think it looks badass!". And, because its in Vegas and they do walk-ins, there are lots of drunk people demanding ill-advised pieces which the artists only occasionally talk them out of (like the guy that wanted his knob tattooed.)

I really need to check this out. For some reason I have yet to see it, even though it's on as often as LA/Miami Ink.

I did see the season finale of NY Ink (Ami James from Miami Ink opens a Tattoo shop in New York) recently, and was largely the same stuff as the other ones, Corey Miller from LA Ink makes an appearance, I didn't even realise until watching this he'd had a falling out with Kat Von D and had left (I don't seem to keep up with the newest of the new ones). Mind you, all that shit with that Aubry bint (apparently she was on Rock of Love), I'd want to not be on that programme too.

I do genuinely take an interest in some of the stories of people coming into the shop most of the time, but LA Ink has just gone a bit too much into drama (Or at least fake drama), and it's not as good.

Blue Jam

I know it's an old thread but I'm not starting a new one for Playing It Straight. It must be the nastiest and most mean-spirited idea for a gameshow ever: one seemingly sweet and genuine young lady flies to Spain for what she has been led to believe is a dating show, only to be told half of the men she has to choose from are gay and if she picks a gay guy he'll walk off with the prize money, leaving her with nothing but a broken heart. Inevitably there are actual tears as men are forced back into the closet and everyone starts lying to each other for money and wondering "what have we become?". It's horrible and I can't stop fucking watching it and getting my weekly dose of self-loathing- it's a textbook example of car-crash TV.

Harpo Speaks

Quote from: Blue Jam on February 06, 2012, 10:37:27 PM
Playing It Straight

From the trailers it seemed to be playing on a number of stereotypes about gay men, would you say that's the case? It seemed faintly homophobic.

Blue Jam

Quote from: Harpo Speaks on February 06, 2012, 10:47:11 PM
From the trailers it seemed to be playing on a number of stereotypes about gay men, would you say that's the case?

Yes.

I have two gay male friends who also think it's terrible and offensive but are even more addicted to it than I am. I actually felt less self-loathing while watching The Bachelor, and that's saying a lot. I imagine the last episode will end with The Lovely Cara picking a gay guy and storming off in tears as she decides all men are bastards until a counsellor can convince her otherwise.

Yeah, I've been watching Playing It Straight as well, even though it really is the worst thing ever. I've currently got a 100% success rate with the gay-guessing so I'll be sticking with the series until it ends now.

I'm an absolute sucker for shit reality tv. The more crass and vulgar it is, the more I'll want to see it. There was one a couple of years called Vanity Lair, set in a house full of people who eliminated each other based purely on their looks. It was the most hateful piece of shit you'll ever see and it made me want to punch walls but I tuned in every week.

Something that I personally wouldn't describe as a guilty pleasure is The Hotel, which has been essential viewing. It's one of the best shows on telly at the moment. It's cringeworthy (especially for me, having spent four years working in a hotel) but it's pretty pleasant old-school fly-on-the-wall doc fare. Worth a watch.