Meet the Kilshaws Channel 4, Wednesday
Eastenders RTE1, Tuesday
Hot Wax BBC1, Monday
TV3 Ads TV3, Monday
Why is it that people really, really hate Judith Kilshaw, the woman who tried to adopt twins from the US over the Internet? It can't just be because she wanted a child while knowing that she wouldn't be able to adopt in her own country. There are plenty of foreign adoptions in Ireland today, and people don't hate the adopted children or the parents. Maybe it was the notion of buying children over the Internet, although the Kilshaws only actually contacted the agency this way before travelling to the States.
It wouldn't have provided such an easy headline if it had been done by letter or over the phone. Maybe it's because she is such a laughably simple baddy, a natural figure of ridicule - base and inarticulate, with that ugly, twisted mouth, bad hair, slightly hunched back and the neckchain that reads "Foxy". Her husband Alan is the solicitor, but Judith was the spokeswoman, something the public neither understood nor wanted to change.
Watching Meet The Kilshaws on Wednesday, you got the impression that film-maker Victoria Mapplebeck was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. She opened this fly-on-the-wall film with Judith crying in the twins' bedroom, surrounded by two of everything, sobbing: "They don't know what they've done to this family." There were moments of reassurance from the off-screen Mapplebeck, about her clothes and how she looked. Judith didn't seem to have any friends and was abused by strangers on the street. During the three months of filming, perhaps she needed Mapplebeck as much as the film-maker needed her.
Judith, though, makes anything but a sympathetic subject; a horrible, demanding woman blaming everybody but herself, and shouting down anyone who disagrees with her. Now we understand why Alan was so acquiescent. "You lost us those children," she yelled at him immediately after losing the children. "Why don't you get off your fat arse and get a job?" Any reasoned argument was suppressed with childish name-calling. "Shut up. Shut up. Shut your mouth, Fatboy."
Her own mother seemed to be the only one who could really see the whole mess. "Well, I don't think they've been properly vetted for a start," she said, when asked should they have been allowed keep the children. "Oh, I'm going to hit her," murmured Judith.
Between the two of them, the Kilshaws already had four children, and if daughter Hayley was anything to go by, Judith's genes are resilient. After they contacted publicist Max Clifford for advice, there was a row between Alan and Judith over how they should have gone about selling the exclusive. She blames him, naturally, because they've lost the kids and made nothing out of the story. If they had thought it through properly, butts in Hayley, and not gone straight to The Sun in hope of a sympathetic hearing, "you would have kept the children and you would have made some money". Clever girl.
It was never really made clear why Judith is still so desperate to have another girl, although sheer stubbornness and a refusal to accept defeat may by now have as much to do with it as love. "What are the chances of getting a child from Mexico?" she asked a consultant. "What do I do for Brazil? Just go around the orphanages and pick one up? I don't even know any orphanages in Brazil. What about Thailand?"
The couple were eventually offered a free adoption through another US agency. Alan greeted the news with the ebullience of a soldier told he's going over the top in the morning.
This was an uncomfortable, though non-judgmental portrait, not just of what it's like to be "the most hated woman in Britain", but of a singular personality. At least, let's hope she's singular. Did the Kilshaws deserve this abuse? was the question asked at the beginning of the programme. Whatever the answer, no child deserves the Kilshaws.
Mother doesn't always know best. Good old EastEnders came up with the goods again this week, inducing a collective "Yuck!" from millions. I'd dare to suggest that the plot was written with tongue firmly in cheek, but figuring out whose tongue was in whose cheek was the problem.
I came in late, so I'm not going to hazard a guess at how you build up to a plot twist of this magnitude, but the cheeky murderer Steve Owen (Martin Kemp) was tending to his mother as she lay dying on the couch. For those who don't know, Steve's mother is the sort that has long featured in fairy tales, a sort of Cruella de Ville living in a council tower block. Sheila Hancock played her like a freshly poisoned apple.
"Tell me what I can do for you," begged Steve as she gasped for air.
"I want you to kiss me." OK, that's normal. "On the lips." Not normal. Then, with a grip so strong it suggested early rigor mortis, she grasped hold of his head and smacked him one. It hurt him more than it hurt her.
"You're disgastin' " he gurned, trying to wipe the kiss from his mouth.
"You unpleasant, arrogant, deeply attractive man," she breathed, before closing her eyes. If they were her last words, they sure beat "Win one for the Gipper". Steve fled to find the nearest shrink, leaving mother unconscious on the couch, a large portrait of the Queen gazing down upon her. Being pure-bred royalty, though, I'm sure this scene was nothing her royal highness hadn't seen before.
By the way, this was an extra-long episode of Eastenders that shunted into the schedule and delayed programmes further down the line. A mother snogging her son meant the Nine O'Clock News started 10 minutes later than normal. Hooray for public service broadcasting.
This week in Hot Wax, Ruby Wax followed $200 million worth of cars, 250 men and, presumably, 250 penis neuroses in a six-day race from London to St Petersburg, and back. The Gumball Rally is an event organised in honour of the fictional Cannonball Run, a movie starring Sally Field, Burt Reynolds and a moustache with such personality that Reynolds brings a hairpiece along just to keep it company. In the flick, the two race across America, leaving their careers on the road before turning around and running back over them in a sequel.
Careers were not something the Gumball Rally competitors had to worry about. Each seemed to be more idly rich than the next. The wealthiest man in Europe, the heir to the Doritos crown, Vic Reeves, Harold Macmillan's grandson . . . Hold on a second, Vic Reeves? Yep, there he was, the king of surreal comedy, joining the obnoxious elite as they careened through the peasant villages of Eastern Europe. And, frankly, he looked a little ashamed to have been caught among them.
If you tuned in hoping that the sound of roaring race-car engines would finally drown out Ruby Wax, then you were sorely mistaken. It only made her yell even louder. Ms Wax has not developed any subtlety with her years. Being interviewed by her must be like living next door to an unattended, late-night burglar alarm. You can twist and you can turn, and you can pull the pillow over your ears, but you're not going to be able to block it out. Watching her is a bit like that, too. The programme was interesting for the novelty of the topic, but lazily presumed that Ruby Wax would be enough to carry it through.
Maybe I shouldn't take these things too seriously, but shouldn't she have asked at least one contestant whether he was concerned that they might kill somebody on this ego-trip? At last, one person had a moment of unsolicited clarity after witnessing the poverty of people along the route. "The poor people. I'm embarrassed. We drove through one place and there was a guy washing his hands in a bloody puddle. And there's a 175-grand Lamborghini, vwoom! A 120-grand Ferrari, vwoom! And I'm just thinking, what am I doing with this lot? The whole thing's gone wrong. I'm embarrassed." His friend decided to agree, possibly because he felt it was the thing to do in front of the camera. "Then why are we here? I paid 1500 quid. We've been ripped off by toffs," said Vic Reeves, cementing his reputation as the new Burt Reynolds.
If you watched Coronation Street during the week, I hope you were as confused as me to see the "commercial presentation" for one of those premium-rate phone numbers which took over the whole ad break. A quiz, it was presented by a young woman and a co-host with teeth so polished he had me adjusting the brightness button on my telly. A chap called Tom from Co Down won £20,000 after answering some multiple-choice questions, the absence of an audience only adding to the surreal nature of this thing as it went on and on - with no sign of normal service reasserting itself. We've all heard the jibe about the ads being better than the programmes, but TV3 has apparently turned it into a mission statement.
tvreview@irish-times.ie
