I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here ITV1 | ITVX
Squid Game: The Challenge Netflix
Doctor Who: The Star Beast BBC One | iPlayer
Boat Story BBC One | iPlayer
Such Brave Girls BBC Three | iPlayer
Brace yourselves for controversy. Is it possible that Nigel Farage, Brexit architect, former Ukip leader, leading nationalist pub bore and grifter, now appearing on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here, simply isn’t as fascinating as he thinks he is?
ITV reportedly splurged a record £1.5m signing the GB News presenter, but viewing figures are not looking good. The first edition was 2.2 million down from the 2022 opener. While no one is nostalgic for last year’s antihero-signing – the pandemic health minister Matt “I fell in love” Hancock – he didn’t haemorrhage viewers.
After Farage participated in the first bush tucker trial (munching on camel anus pizza), viewers, tellingly, didn’t vote for him to do the second trial (star signings are usually made to do all the early trials). All this after Farage spilled insipid political tea (Boris Johnson: “surprisingly introverted”), exposed his buttocks in a jungle shower, contemplated his chances of becoming Tory leader (“Never say never!”) and debated Brexit with an unimpressed Fred Sirieix from First Dates. What does a chap have to do to get some negative attention?
Ant and Dec now have panic fluttering in their eyes. In his pre-jungle spiel, Farage announced: “You’re going to find the real me,” but he could have added: “if you can be razzed to look.” Later, declaring himself “gutted” about the non-trial to the carefully civil Guardian restaurant critic Grace Dent, he observed: “If you do the challenges, it’s 25% of the air time”. Oh Nigel, mate, don’t beg.
Other campmates include Britney Spears’s shell-shocked sister, Jamie Lynn (“Holy s-word, what have I done?”), but it’s Farage who’s bombing the most, coming over as sly, controlled, even mildly depressing. For those boycotting the show because of him, it’s karmic justice. For ITV it’s a wakeup call. Is Britain finally getting over its toxic addiction to “big characters”?
Netflix’s 10-part Squid Game: The Challenge, the gameshow based on the mega-hit South Korean drama, could have been a tacky franchise cash-in, but it’s a beautifully executed blast. Riffing off the cult show’s iconography, there are 456 tracksuit-clad, English-speaking real-life contestants (mostly from the US and Europe), battling to win an absurd, unprecedented $4.56m (£3.65m). It’s filmed in the UK, and the striking decor and ambience are the same as the original (red-suited squids; bunk beds; orchestral music). As are many games (Red Light, Green Light with a giant doll; honeycomb cookies, etc), only no one actually dies at the end of them. Contestants are generally eliminated in mass batches (each “death” adding $10,000 to a giant Perspex pig hung on the ceiling).
This is Squid Game: The Challenge’s main selling point: you don’t know what’s going to happen, or who’s going next. The clawing desperation to win puts all of human nature on display: self-interest, venality and subterfuge, but also teamwork, loyalty and integrity. It would have been nice to see more Korean players, and the drama’s sense of capitalist satire is muted here, but after banging through eight of the episodes, I have to declare myself hooked. Move over The Traitors, there’s some wild new gameshow crack in town.
Over to BBC One for Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary, and the first of three hour-long specials before the 15th doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, takes over on Christmas Day. Written by the eminent returning showrunner Russell T Davies, The Star Beast features David Tennant’s Doctor (who regenerated after Jodie Whittaker’s run; do try to keep up). He reconnects with Donna Noble (Catherine Tate), whose survival depends on not remembering him.
Elsewhere, there’s Donna’s daughter (Heartstopper’s Yasmin Finney), spaceships, a furry alien called the Meep (voiced by Miriam Margolyes) that resembles a giant moth-eaten Furby, eco-messaging, identity issues and lashings of apocalyptic CGI (Doctor Who now has a Disney-sized budget thanks to a US deal).
It’s a bumpy ride, and an in-joke-riddled nostalgia fest, but engaging and amusing. Tardis-heads will love it, and, all these years on, Tennant maintains the tufty-haired, mad-professor brio of his Doctor.
Staying on BBC One, the good news is that the screenwriters Harry and Jack Williams (Missing; Liar; The Tourist) like to switch things up, and not just keep repeating the same drama. The bad news: much of their new six-part British thriller Boat Story (BBC One) feels ripe and overplayed.
Daisy Haggard (Breeders; Back to Life) and Paterson Joseph (Peep Show) play struggling souls who discover a wrecked boat full of drugs and decide to sell them. Bloodthirsty mayhem ensues, led by a master criminal called the Tailor (Tcheky Karyo) and his henchman (Craig Fairbrass).
A sense of whimsy runs through Boat Story: silent movie placards; a play within a play from Phil Daniels; a romantic storyline involving a pasty-maker (Joanna Scanlon), whose son is a local police officer (wonderfully played by Ethan Lawrence). But at the same time it’s mega-violent (amputated fingers; ripped-out tongues; severed heads; bloodbaths). The effect is of the Coen brothers meeting Tarantino, mixed with a splash of Martin McDonagh. It’s not offensive, just de trop, arch and effortful. For all the ambition and great performances, six episodes feel like 10.
Such Brave Girls (BBC Three) is a new six-part comedy, created by Kat Sadler, directed by Simon Bird, which takes the grey area of family relationships and turns it into a blackly farcical non-safe space. Josie (Sadler) has depression and a cloying boyfriend, and thinks she’s a lesbian. Her sister, Billie (Sadler’s real-life sibling, Lizzie Davidson), is a fizzing fireball of misdirected energy, trying to win back her witless boyfriend. Their mother (Louise Brealey) tries to land a wealthy man, while doling out life lessons: “Have a cup of tea, pop some deodorant on, and stop thinking.”
In Such Brave Girls, the sisterly bond is warped (“trauma’s all we’ve got”), self-esteem is microscopic and daddy issues arrive by the pallet-full (their father went out one day for teabags and never returned). Its resting comic heartbeat is that of a kind of more despairing, gen Z-fuelled Nighty Night. At times, the acting and plotting verge on basic, but Sadler, Davidson and Brealey truly spark together. The more you watch, the funnier, stranger and more original it starts to feel.
Star ratings (out of five)
I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! ★★
Squid Game: The Challenge ★★★★
Doctor Who ★★★
Boat Story ★★★
Such Brave Girls ★★★
What else I’m watching
Archie
(ITVX)
This sumptuous, affecting four-part bio-drama about Cary Grant uses a split timeline to interweave the story of his brutally impoverished British childhood and rise to become a Hollywood legend. Jason Isaacs stars.
The Great Climate Fight
(Channel 4)
An impassioned two-part docuseries in which Kevin McCloud, Mary Portas and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall come together to launch climate change initiatives and challenge politicians.
The Velveteen Rabbit
(Apple TV+)
In time for the festive season, a charming, escapist animation/live-action adaptation of the 1920s children’s classic by Margery Williams, in which a boy’s new toy rabbit gets to meet his other toys. Helena Bonham Carter and Nicola Coughlan are among the toy voices.
