KEY POINTS:
Teenagers might be unskilled in some areas, such as making good decisions driving down the road, but they are usually incredibly sharp when it comes to spotting when the adults are trying to put one over them.
So where the makers of Brit reality show Baby Borrowers (TV2,
Thursday, 7.30pm) found five teenage couples to play mums and dads for a month remains a mystery. There were no clues as to why 10 young people would possibly want to be enforced baby-sitters in the show's introduction, leading us to same old conclusion that we should never underestimate the lure of being on TV.
The teen pregnancy rate in Britain is the highest in Europe, we learned from the commentary, the implication being that this show, alone, will be contraceptive enough to reverse the trend.
British teens might be "breeding like rabbits", as the narrator asserted. They are not a patch, however, on reality telly shows which seem to produce hideous new offspring every other week.
Baby Borrowers looks to be the lovechild of Super Nanny and Brat Camp, designed for those who love to watch childish bad behaviour and others riding for a fall.
You didn't have to wait long in last night's first episode for the teen's confident assertions that minding a child, housekeeping and holding down a job would be a piece of cake to turn into the first howls of anguish.
One girl, a townie, only had to take one look at her "job" mucking out a pig pen before the tears started. Another wanted to go home on the first night when she worked out that the boy who's a nice accessory on her arm down the shopping mall isn't so much fun in a domestic setting, being "one of those people who don't talk much".
All the couples have been chosen for their "I told you so" potential. Princess Ava likes to dedicate two hours a day to putting on her make-up and doesn't predict that having a baby to look after will disturb her routine. Her boyfriend from Kosovo has definite ideas about the woman's place being in the home. Eventually Ava might register that this is going to be a problem.
Then there's the metal-loving goth boy - about as "gothic as a marshmallow", his father unkindly notes - who is already hen-pecked at 17. And the smug pair who are proud to proclaim themselves "more like a married couple than anyone else they know". They obviously think that's a good thing.
With the thrill of being independent still fresh, the teens have yet to work out why five sets of real parents are so eager to hand their infants over into their keeping.
Like many reality-check shows, Baby Borrowers is masquerading as an important social experiment. If the teens learn something, let's hope it's about the adult hypocrisy that takes kids, big and small, and puts them in a deliberately designed war zone under the guise of education. From all those repeated scenes of screaming matches, effing and blinding, it's obvious the purpose of this show is purely conflict TV.
