Boom Town

Series one, episode two
‘The people you are about to see are real. Their passions and jobs are genuine, but some scenes have been enhanced for your entertainment.’ So reads the text that introduces ‘Boom Town’ – a break from the structured reality formula that sees a cast of real-lifers playing it for laughs, not just for soapy cliffhangers.

Which sounds intriguing, all the way until the opening title sequence when the bubble promptly bursts. The snapshots of recurring characters, the construct of a fake town… it’s ‘Little Britain’ with real people. Worryingly, they've been given strange suffixes too. Get ready to meet ‘Garth – Life Coach’, ‘Louis – The Stripper’ and ‘Kev – The Witch’. What's off-putting is the high number of ‘eccentrics’ (BBC3’s words) where the ‘laughs’ derive from their lack of English. A whole sketch featuring Donata (a middle-aged wannabe actress) hinges on her immigrant twang, while the same laughs are gleaned from ‘Talina – The Temptress’ (another ancient eastern European stereotype brought to life ).

The real scoop here though, is that, like the plankton that turn up on the first-round of ‘X-Factor’ to get laughed at on film, these people know the score and are still somehow comfortable with the idea of young kids laughing at their deeply unfunny and staged exploits for six half-hour episodes. Hard to tell who’s sadder – the participants for signing up to it or the Beeb for commissioning it.