Colin Hogg: Desperately seeking the remote

The cast of the Bachelor Australia

Double dose of The Bachelor on NZ screens this year wonderful news if you like sexist, brain-killing twaddle.

The search continues for the next big splashy tasteless television hit and the terrific news is that they might have found it, for this year at least. It's called The Bachelor and it truly is awful, though in an awfully catchy way, of course.

Shows like these really aren't entertainment so much as notifiable diseases, reproducing themselves endlessly in new strains. Maybe that's why going viral is good.

How would I know? After all, I'm somewhat outside the demographic tentacles of shows like The Bachelor, which began a new 15-part series on TV2 last Friday at 7.30 in its Australian version. (The original American version of The Bachelor, meanwhile, is in its 19th series.)

This new one, in fact, is the second series of The Bachelor Australia, running now on TV2 perhaps as a bit of a spoiler ahead of rival TV3's soon-to-land The Bachelor NZ. "Yay bring it on," did I hear you shout?

The Bachelor Australia, with its second series now on TV2, is as cliche-ridden as its hero Blake. Photo / Supplied Network Ten

And "Yay" it should be, so long as you like highly polished sexist twaddle involving a bunch of moon-struck young women lining up to compete with one another for an apparently perfect man.

In this series, the perfect man is called Blake. He's a towering hunk of a real estate auctioneer from Perth with a voice deeper than Batman, though with a slight lisp.

The lisp, frankly, is the most appealing thing about Blake, who seems just too smooth to strike a spark off.

But that's not what the competitors seem to think - the competitors being the 24 remarkably good-looking single women from across Australia "putting their hearts on the line" for a crack at Blake.

And it's lights, camera, limos, frocks, mansion, action as the emotional music swells, along with a voice-over telling us that "the biggest obstacle they face is each other" in this "incredible search for love".

Anita, the dog groomer from Victoria, says she needs "to move on from a dog to a man", though not in front of Blake, who stands before the mansion like a fox greeting each foolish chicken as she spills out of her limo.

They're arriving for the show's opening cocktail party sequence where they meet and mingle while Blake takes a gander at his love options and sets about eliminating four of them.

Some of them are silly enough to sing to him. Some of them are just silly. "I'm Diana, just like the princess," says the one called Diana in a little-girl voice.

Blake, meantime, is just filled to the brim with cliches and really keen to start a family apparently.

"I want to be the dad I didn't have," he mentions in one of the show's uncountable heart-moving moments. Approach with extreme caution.

If, on the other hand, you'd rather just run some air through your giggle glands, there's a new UK series on TV One called The Guess List (Thursday, 9.55pm) that is funny while being quite daft.

Set up as a misguided quiz show, its basic aim is to offer host Rob Brydon endless opportunities to take sharp shots at his panel of B-grade British celebs, which he does with breathtaking speed and wit.

Not having heard of most of the stars didn't matter and neither did the pretence at being a quiz show or even the involvement of two bewildered members of the public.

It was funny anyway.