"LOOK you wanted something to review, well I'm giving you something to review," said my wife in determined mood as the clock reached 9pm on Wednesday and the battle began over what was happening in Hell's Kitchen.

Who needs Big Brother when you have actress Amanda Barrie trying to hit chef Gordon Ramsay as hard as she can?

Alas, the goings-on at Jimmy's Farm (BBC2) have caught my good woman's eye and the irritation-ometer was up to maximum as I realised I was watching another young man with more ambition than good sense. Jimmy Doherty's much-publicised friendship with Jamie Oliver (isn't he another reality TV chef?) ensured TV cameras rolled at the rundown farm where he intends to breed free-range rare pigs for the sausage market. That investment seems to make the inexperienced farmer more Jammy than Jimmy, but nothing he attempts is ever finished.

"What a twit, he's got a builder for a father yet he didn't ask him to put a door on the butchery area and now it's filthy and unusable," observed my wife, who has a keen eye for detail after years of Changing Rooms and DIY SOS.

Jimmy ended up driving 600 miles to the Lake District to make his first consignment of best bangers and announced a £300 profit before realising that a pig had dropped dead unnoticed.

Undaunted, my wife served sausages as we watched the other series to grab her attention, Get A New Life, (BBC2), about a family of Brits moving to Florida without a visa, which is being shown at the strange time of 6pm.

Actually, we're all slightly unnerved by regular visits to property saleswoman Tania Reed, who's accent drifts between her Blackpool birthplace and downtown Orlando.

Ms Reed moves like an immensely fat person even though she's had a tummy tuck ("wanna see my new belly button") and liposuction to slim herself down. Perhaps we should have paid more attention to Robin Williams in Flubber (BBC1's Bank Holiday Monday film).

Sadly, she can't find the right man to father a second child - don't ask about the first one - and is currently in pursuit of a sperm donor.

The programme is supposed to be about the Heath family, but they seem to spend most of their time on the phone or Internet to England in floods of tears. "Why do they go if they're from such close families?" asked Mrs Sausagemeat.

None of this is doing any good for my attempts to organise a second family visit to North America. Even worse was LAPD - Protect And Serve?

This World (BBC2, Thursday) where the south-east district of Los Angeles was revealed to be as lawless as Baghdad with scores of gangland killings.

"Do I care if Americans are running around shooting each other? You'd be crazy to want to live there," was my wife's response. Apparently, even the dream of swimming with dolphins at Florida's Discovery Cove might not be enough to draw her back.

Whatever happened to the mom's apple-pie world of Flipper? Perhaps I missed the Miami Vice episode where he was arrested for eating a tuna without a licence.

Published: 05/06/2004