I’ll take overseas please
Friday, March 12th, 2010
I don’t usually believe in the concept of Guilty Pleasures. I don’t hide my Bros 7”s; I freely admit to liking The Steve Miller Band; I wear my love of pop trash on my sleeve. When it comes to TV though, it is with a large amount of shame that I admit my fondness for a particular Friday night programme.
It is an unchanging formula with the same boring old story every week.
It is hosted by two perma-smiling fools.
It is, in these times of economic austerity and environmental concern, a completely vile concept.
It is the most strangely unpatriotic programme I’ve ever seen.
It is A Place in the Sun.
Each week a couple face the challenging decision of whether to stay in miserable, expensive, rip-off old Blighty with UK host Johnny (always wearing a jumper) or whether to move to a fun-filled land of sun, endless cheap properties, sun, amazing views round every corner and even more sun in ‘the rest of Europe’ with Jasmine (always wearing a frock and a tan).
And inevitably every week the couple reject the mother country and up-sticks to ‘the rest of Europe’.
No matter how great a job Johnny does finding them a lovely (and within-budget house) in a quiet corner of rural Wales or a trendy pad in central Manchester, Jasmine always wins the couple over with the promise of an exotic lifestyle in sticksville, Slovenia.
The best thing is that A Place in the Sun studiously avoids any mention of any practical considerations whatsoever other than the all important house prices. Can Maria and Steve, looking for that exciting new life in Spain, speak Spanish? Will they miss the families and friends they’ve left behind? What are they actually going to do in that lovely picturesque village in France? Oh yes, run a gite with all that experience they gained from being a jewellery maker and a tree surgeon in real life.
Each show, I hold on with (not very) baited breath, just waiting for someone to choose the UK, for someone to realise that there is more to life than weather, cheap property prices and even cheaper dreams, and that Britain really isn’t that bad. And they never do.
But amongst all those inward looking ‘aren’t we great’ programmes like Coast, The Seven Ages of Britain, any show hosted by David Dimbleby or Alan Titchmarsh etc., A Place in the Sun does stand unique as the most unpatriotic show on the box. I don’t know how it got through.



