A New Life Down Under (C4): The World's Most Powerful Celebrity (BBC2): ONE of these days, a family will go abroad to start a new life and everything will go according to plan.

Until then, TV programme makers have ready-made dramas begging to have a camera pointed at them during the tears and tantrums.

Steve, Zena and her children, Wesley, 18, and Abby, 15, packed their bags and emigrated to Australia for A New Life Down Under. Four days after arriving, Wes caught a plane back home to rejoin his fiance in Essex. Not the best of starts, and Zena never recovered from her son's departure.

While joiner Steve settled into his job and Abby made new friends at school, where learning to surf was on the curriculum, Zena moped around after failing to find work as a hairdresser. Space, freedom and year-round sunshine did nothing to allay her depression and growing unhappiness.

Ten weeks after arriving, Zena announced her intention of going home to England. This being a TV documentary, she told the camera about her decision before telling Steve.

Then she changed her mind and decided to stay - but not for long. Four months after arriving, the family returned home. They can have another go at emigrating as long as they do it within five years. Somehow, that doesn't seem very likely.

What they need is the steely determination shown by Madonna, whose drive, focus and passion helped make her one of the most famous and successful performers in the world.

Financial expert Alvin Hall set out in The World's Most Powerful... Celebrity to assess whether she or talk show host Oprah Winfrey was the world's most powerful celebrity.

He spoke to key players in their rise to power and how they used it in his investigation. This was okay as far as it went, with observations from school friends, managers, journalists and so on - but not, of course, the two women themselves.

Hall was selective in the evidence he offered. Why, for instance, no mention of Madonna's struggle to find success as a movie star? Or Oprah's book club success story, whereby a mere mention of a novel on her show ensures a sales boom?

He didn't regard the size of their bank balances as the sole measure of who was most powerful. For the record, Madonna is reputedly worth in excess of $300m, and Oprah over $1bn.

Hall was more concerned with Madonna's ability to surround herself with the right people for the right job, and how mentioning a brand of real ale in a TV interview caused sales to soar. And with Oprah turning a tacky tabloid story to her own advantage, and becoming so successful despite no apparent burning desire to be so.

The winner was Madonna because, Hall said, she was still a risk-taker. Unlike this series, which is a safe way of filling 40 minutes with superficial analysis and old clips.

Published: 28/11/2003