Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents: can it be for real?

Wow. I’m amazed. Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents is the best TV programme of this year in its searing satire of shocking documentaries. At the conclusion of the programme the audience is left with a series of philosophical questions: Who am I? What is the difference between subject and object? How can the BBC still claim a licence fee? All of these the documentary leaves tantalisingly unresolved.

We follow a group of teenagers, who, at eighteen years old, get to go on their first ‘lads'/ladettes' holiday’, but, unbeknownst to them, their parents fly out to spy on their every move. That the programme doesn’t find stalking in this manner worrying, viewing it as natural, is obviously mocking the parent-child relationship present in Indo-European culture. The programme gears us up with snapshots of drunken nights, bungee jumps and swearing that are repeated throughout the show and you’d think it gets boring but no, watching vomit multiple times never loses its immediacy or excitement. But before we can get to the titillating scenes of debauchery, we see the children’s relationship with their parents. Generally these are nice people, who express wishes that their child will not get arrested or take ketamine or any other reasonable thing. But the programme jumps on this like a hyena who hasn’t eaten for six months at an all-you-can-eat gazelle buffet, hoping that said children will take elephantine proportions of recreational drugs to create conflict and GOOD TELEVISON. Satirising, obviously.

Imagine their shock when more often than not, all turns out well. The parents are not control freaks but simply human beings who accept the fact that their kids are going to go out and get inebriated. Panicking, the show flails around for some sort of conflict in drunken arguments that are usually resolved in the morning.

Of course there is the alternative option: that this is not a satire and a show intended to be serious, a show with no merit and little humour apart from laughing at drunk people and parents trying to be cool. The way the camera lingers on 18 year old girls getting changed in their underwear trying the “bend over” test (if you bend over and your knickers are visible, change the dress) is perverse and something I’d expect to find on Babestation, not on a publically funded broadcaster. The programme is an hour long, but has a five minute introduction scene not only previewing what is to come but showing previous shows as well and the show is so padded it could defuse a grenade. It was annoying when The Apprentice did it but now it seems routine – a way of selling you a product that, as well as dragging on too long (drunk, drunk, drunk, semi-conflict, drunk) feels insultingly short.

What is most depressing about this scenario is that out there are budding directors with ideas of original and actually good programmes and series that have been crowded out by this polyfilla show. BBC3 with its idiotic sitcoms, reruns of Family Guy and Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps every night and now this - it's become a joke of a channel. I’m not arguing for every programme to be an intellectual blockbuster, merely for shows to have some spark of inventiveness or wit rather than this tawdry parade of strip clubs and foam parties.

See Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents on Tuesdays at BBC3 at 10pm.

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