Correct choice for bottom of the barrel

By FRANCES GRANT

"Anarchic" would be the kindest way to describe tonight's British reality TV special Make My Day TV2, 9pm.

The Channel 4 show uses hidden cameras to see how an unwitting contestant reacts to a series of bizarre incidents, many involving minor celebrities.

The victim in tonight's one-off (it was a series in Britain but TV2 is treating us to only one instalment) is a Scottish lass. The 27-year-old model agency worker wakes up at 7am oblivious to the fact there's a hidden camera in her bedroom.

Anyone hoping this might provide ample opportunity for prurience and voyeurism will be disappointed. The contestant always appears fully clothed. Not so the half-naked, hunk who rings her doorbell asking to use the phone. Superman poses the contestant's first challenge: will she let him in and will she give him her phone number?

Now let's see: would a 27-year-old single woman possibly be tempted by the chance of a date with a handsome man not given to wearing much clothing? That's a hard one.

You get the picture. Make My Day is a candid camera gameshow in which the contestant has no idea they're taking part or that they could win £5000 ($13,944) by making the correct choice when certain dilemmas arise.

To make up for the humiliation of being secretly filmed, the secret tests aren't that hard to pass so they can at least walk away with a pocketful of dosh.

Our Scottish contestant spends most of the day shrieking and giggling to her girlfriends or on the phone to her mum about the gorgeous men who are brightening up her day. Celebrities in on the gag include the popstar Jade Jones and girlfriend Baby Spice, aka Emma Bunton.

Make My Day contestants are nominated by their friends and colleagues and vetted by researchers before being filmed for, as presenter Sara Cox breathlessly tells us, the "most amazing day" of their lives.

British television critics found the show nice, disappointingly so in most cases.

The Times critic wrote: "For a reality game show, this is surprisingly gentle and non-sadistic. This means that it is high on feelgood and low on dramatic tension. On Make My Day, it seems, you win a reward for being vaguely immoral, which is probably an accurate reflection of contemporary life."

The Daily Telegraph: "As trashy TV goes, it works surprisingly well. Everything about Make My Day indicates a show that has finally reached the bottom of the reality-TV barrel. Everything that is, apart from watching it - which turns out to be not only quite good fun, but also a far less guilty pleasure than you'd imagine."

Daily Express: "If you're going to make this kind of television then you must have an element of cruelty. There is none of that in the bland Make My Day. There is no risk that everything could go horribly wrong. [Reality TV] is unattractive enough when it's nasty, but it's fantastically dull when it's nice."