They can have one of mine

I spent most of yesterday evening watching The Baby Borrowers (Cameron is away): three episodes back to back. Anyone seen it? Five fairly innocuous yet extremely clueless teenage couples were moved into their own homes, then given a baby for a weekend, then a toddler, then they will have pre-teens, teens, then some elderly people to care for. I was amazed by how utterly useless most of the girls were - I’m sure I wasn’t quite that self-obsessed even at 16 – but even more amazed by how good the boys were, even the chap who kept harping on about being a “non-verbal communicator” (what does he do, send thought waves?). Most of my amazement was saved for the babies’ real parents: who in their right mind would hand over their baby for 3 days (now a toddler I can understand)? Wouldn’t they miss them? The babies seemed to take it all in their stride and weren’t obviously teary but the poor little things were in a strange house with strange people, with just a few familiar toys to make them feel at home. It just doesn’t seem very kind.

One of the couples has hardly appeared, which presumably means they have taken it all in their stride, but the others have been shown in all their glory. (It probably says more about me than them that I was surprised their parents let them appear: there is no way my mum would have let me move into a house with – gasp – a boy at that age! And also surprised by all the swearing given that they know they will appear on telly and that the children were listening. I am just terribly middle class and old-fashioned, I know.) I especially enjoyed the girl who went and spent 2 hours removing her hair extensions rather than going home where her boyfriend had been house-husbanding all day; she then had a huge hissy fit and stomped out when he asked her to make him a coffee. I can’t see that one lasting though to be fair he did do that annoying “mummy” thing of thinking he and only he knew how to look after the baby. Red-faced, I recognised myself a little.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 5:22 pm and is filed under modern life is rubbish, telly. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.