Make My Day (C4)
Weird Nature (BBC1)
Without knowing it, Joanne Leggett became the star of her own TV show in Make My Day. This new hidden camera show has been called a real life Truman Show, a reference to the movie in which Jim Carrey's character discovered that his entire life was a TV soap being watched round-the-clock by millions of people around the world. This seems a lofty comparison. Make My Day is more like an extended Candid Camera or Game For A Laugh with knobs on.
Travel agent Joanne's entire day was a set-up with, as presenter Sara Cox told us, her actions being picked up by 50 hidden cameras. She was put at the centre of five bizarre dilemmas including having to deal with awkward customers. The first was a middle-aged man who demanded to book an 18-30 Holiday. Next, a nubile new bride tried to book a dangerous sports holiday for her elderly millionaire husband.
Most people have enough trouble at work without TV adding to them but Joanne hardly batted an eyelid as her travel knowledge and patience was tested.
Then Joanne, who hadn't danced for 12 years, bumped into her former dancing partner and landed an audition for a pop video featuring her hero Keith Duffy. The Boyzone singer was in on the joke and helped with yet another bizarre twist - letting Joanne witness him buying drugs from a local dealer, who was played by her former headmaster. Her final test was to see if she'd shop her school head when questioned by the police.
Of course, it would have made much better television if she had lost her cool, told the middle-aged swinger he was a dirty old man and warned the rich bridegroom that his wife was trying to kill him off and fingered her old head as the Mr Big of the drugs world.
Unhappily for us, she didn't behave badly, taking each odd happening in her stride. Happily for Joanne, her good behaviour won her a new car.
Nothing in Make My Day was as bizarre as the BBC's new nature series Weird Nature. Take bushbabies. If you can catch them, that is. A single leap can take them two metres into the air, the human equivalent of jumping over two double decker buses. Let's hope they're never eligible for the high jump in the Olympics.
Marvellous Motion gave us a succession of wondrous sights from molluscs that propel themselves using their shells like castanets to conga-ing lobsters. Every available camera trick, including stop motion and freeze frame, was employed to highlight these amazing animal turns.
The sight of a galloping crocodile is not something you forget in a hurry, especially if he's chasing you. Or frogs whose webbed feet have evolved into wings to enable them to paraglide.
Perhaps most intriguingly, we discovered why Mexican jumping beans jump. They're the seed of a desert shrub and inside there's a live moth caterpillar. Heat and light make them as jumpy as a victim on Make My Day
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