I had almost forgotten about daytime programming. Work, school pickup, standing like a prison officer over homework, making tea, eating my own, doing bedtime (“The end of shit o’clock” as an equally weary friend puts it) means I haven’t turned the telly on before 9pm for five years or more.
I’d forgotten how nice it is until it came time to review the new series of Drawers Off (Channel 4), the teatime show presented by Jenny Eclair, in which a handful of amateur artists gently compete over the course of a week for a small cash prize and a place in the winners’ gallery. The gentle twist is that all their pictures are of life models. In the first series, which I went back and watched after the series two preview episodes, the artists themselves took it in turns to go near-naked. But this time round – perhaps on the advice of lawyers, perhaps after a dearth of applicants ready to expose both their artistic skills and wobbly bits, perhaps to lessen the cringe factor – a proper model is used.
