Reunion Hotel
Dreamland
Here’s a handy life hack. When someone offers you a clever, new, time-saving way to do a chore, ignore them. You save yourself a lot of trouble.
Internet tips about ingenious ways to open cans of beans, pack suitcases or tie your boots never work. That’s because they were created by teen influencers for TikTok videos, who assume that anything new must automatically be better.
Alex Jones’ (BBC2 and BBC1 Wales) Reunion Hotel provided an excellent example of the hopeless hack, the duvet sausage… an innovative way to get yourself tangled up while struggling to fit a duvet into a cover.
How it works: Turn the cover inside out and place it on the mattress. Put the duvet on top. Roll them up towards the open end. Peel the cover back around the sausage, give it a good shake, sprain your shoulder, keep shaking, howl in frustration, and finally you have a lumpy continental comforter. Beautiful.
Alex Jones’ (BBC2 and BBC1 Wales) Reunion Hotel provided an excellent example of the hopeless hack, the duvet sausage… an innovative way to get yourself tangled up while struggling to fit a quilt into a sleeve
Before the Internet, we had sheets and blankets. So much easier, so much cheaper and so old-fashioned. In the TikTok era, tucking in a blanket seems as medieval as sleeping on straw with a pig for warmth.
The duvet hack was just an extra, a little 20-tog filler on Alex’s show that brought people together at a North Wales boutique hotel for an emotional encounter. Her catchphrase was intriguing: “If you had the chance to meet someone from your past, who would it be?”
But the size is an uneven hodgepodge, like a badly wrapped quilt. It took bits of Long Lost Family, of DIY SOS, and of hotel reality documentaries, and put them all together in a giant pillowcase.
A couple brought their children to thank the volunteer builders who helped them remodel their bathroom after their daughter was born with a painful skin condition. Another man and his wife came to meet the brother he never knew he had.
The concept had to be stretched for the most interesting story, as 22-year-old Tegan Badham was there to meet a man who played just a few seconds into her past. Last July she slipped on the platform of King’s Cross tube station and had to be carried to safety by a stranger.
Lily Allen (right), the jaded and rebellious sister of Trish (Freema Agyeman, left), proved what we already knew, that she’s good at playing characters with attitude and a grin
Esthetician Tegan suffered burns from the 420-volt electric rail — “like a cramp in your leg, but all over your body.” The rubber soles of her boots saved her from a fatal shock, but if 31-year-old Anthony Smith of Australia hadn’t grabbed her, she would have been hit by the oncoming train.
By the time she knew what was happening, Anthony was gone. “I’m going to give him the biggest cwtch [cuddle] of all times,” she promised. Alex clearly hoped that the two would fall in love and get married at first sight, but even she couldn’t fit that extra filling into her duvet cover.
The family sitcom Dreamland (Sky Atlantic) also crammed a lot into its first half hour, as we met four generations at a party for pregnant mother Trish (Freema Agyeman) in Margate, then headed to the hospital for a rant about racism at the GGD.
Lily Allen, as Mel, Trish’s jaded and rebellious sister, proved what we already knew, that she’s good at playing characters with attitude and a grin. Then she revealed something I wouldn’t have guessed: She’s hopeless at physical comedy. Lily can’t fall over.
Frances Barber, Martina Laird, Aimee-Ffion Edwards and Gabby Best co-star, with Sheila Reid as the port-swilling Nan. That’s too many top-notch actresses with not enough room to shine. It’s an overstuffed quilt of a comedy.