The Box (ITV)
You have to watch The Box. Make an appointment, set the recorder, look it up via the catch-up campaign, but whatever you do, experience it for yourself.
Because nothing I say will convince you how spectacularly ill-conceived, tasteless, moronic, boring, and infantile this show is.
It’s as if ITV bosses set out to create the worst game show in TV history, and have succeeded. And then they thought, ‘How can we make this worse? Here’s an idea. . .
‘Let Gary Lineker present it!’
The Box, spread over an hour and featuring ten celebrity participants, contained three rounds.
The first was a scavenger hunt at a construction site, where players had to find pieces of plywood painted yellow.
‘It’s as if ITV bosses set out to create the worst game show in TV history and have succeeded,’ says Christopher Stevens as Gary Lineker presents new show The Box
The premise of The Box has our ten C-list celebs arriving at an unknown location, each locked in a yellow wardrobe on the back of a truck.
The second was an egg and spoon race on a race track. And the final was a game of rock, paper, scissors, involving only two players.
Throughout all of this, the Boy Lineker hung around the perimeter with nothing to do but shout vague instructions into a megaphone. He had no jokes, no banter, no personality and no reason to be there.
I never thought I’d say this, but this is a format that could actually be improved by Phillip Schofield.
It would still be atrocious nonsense, but at least he had the ability to pretend he actually cared about the shows he hosted.
Gary couldn’t have expressed his feelings more clearly if he had shouted into his megaphone: “I know this is raunchy nonsense, but I’ve ruined my TV career and I don’t know what else to do.”
The premise of The Box has our ten C-list celebs arriving at an unknown location, each locked in a yellow wardrobe on the back of a truck. Do they really travel across the country like this? Of course not.
You might think that given how outspoken he is about illegal immigrants, Gary might be wiser than hosting a game show about people being crammed into containers, loaded into trucks and driven across the country.
Among the participants is the former Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, a small man with an ego so inflated that he was in danger of being pigeonholed.
With his short legs and wobbly body, Bercow looks like a Steiff teddy bear when he runs.
He also cheats at the egg and spoon race, which is about what you’d expect.
His faint glimmer of fame is entirely due to the ridiculous manner in which he bellowed, “Order!” in the house, and he is happy to do this on demand, for anyone who asks, like a teddy bear with a drawstring.
Joey Essex, a man who achieved his own slice of fame for no apparent reason, was impressed. “You were the Order Man?” he asked. ‘What, for example, in the Great Chamber?’
Words cannot convey how terrible it all is. I am reduced to incoherence. Just now. . . Eur. Wow. Gurk. Box. Bleurrh.
