Meet The Parents

Alex Zane has admitted he fears being left red-faced - when the joke turns on him. The Rude Tube presenter revealed he is paranoid that all his victims will seek "revenge". He confessed: "When things start going weird you check every mirror and see there are no cameras to make sure it is just a strange situation." The DJ said one of his casualties in Meet The Parents was "terrified" after his partner's pretend parents tried to persuade him to take part in a bank robbery.

I didn't think it was possible to detest a TV show within its first 30 seconds, but hidden camera prank atrocity Meet the Parents proved me wrong.

Take two young lovebirds, one of whom is meeting their partner's family for the first time. How lovely. But wait, there's a twist: unbeknownst to him or her, the family are actually actors! If they can endure five hours in their outrageous company, the couple win a holiday. If not - according to the punchably arch voiceover - their relationship might be ruined forever. Hilarious!

The actors perform at such an intensely crazy pitch, it's hard to believe that anyone would fall for it: unless you're a credulous idiot like the bloke in this episode, who swallowed their embarrassingly obvious comedy antics in one gormless gulp.

In the few months they'd been together, his girlfriend had apparently neglected to mention that her mother was a highly-strung lunatic, her brother was a pantomime comedy rapper, and her father was recognisable TV actor Dominic Coleman. Weird.

Still, it's something to show the grandkids. "Wow, what was it like being in a hateful E4 reality series, Grandpa?" "Happiest day of our lives, children, happiest day of our lives."

Meet the Parents is a horrendous idea for a television show. Just the thought of it is enough to make you squirm. An unwitting girl- or boyfriend, on their best behaviour, being introduced to their beloved's parents. Except that they're not their beloved's parents at all, they are a cast of actors, chosen with the specific intention of winding up the new kid. Oh yes - and it's all being filmed by hidden camera. If he or she manages to stick it out, the young couple win a holiday (retro!) If they don't, well, they don't.

Last night was pretty much as you would expect: bumbling boyfriend Rich, shirt untucked, arrived to grapple with the melodramatic mood swings of mum and the fearsome temper of dad. Added to the equation were a born-again gap yah student of a sister, a surburban crap rapper of a brother and a gardener whose relationship with his employers isn't strictly professional. Rich is put through a string of humiliations: being grilled about his sex life, having his school reports read out aloud, being co-opted into a rap about hard-ons in the gard-on (ha-ha).

It's all excruciating, of course: the situation, the fuzzy cameras, the whole thing. Quite why anyone would tune in, I'm not sure, though perhaps that's not the point. Like all of those hidden-camera shows (Beadle's About, Candid Camera) the purpose seems to be less the active seeking out so much as the bland time-passing. Meet the Parents is amusing enough in a nothing-much-else-on kind of way. And that's sort of it, really.

Hidden camera shows don't come much grubbier than Meet The Parents (E4), in which a relationship is put to the test when a boyfriend thinks he's meeting his girlfriend's family for the first time. The catch being that the family members are all played by actors with characters from stereotype central: hormonal mum, idiot brother, strict dad etc.

Skipping over why victim Rich had been going out with Carla for eight months yet had never clapped eyes on any of her family, Meet The Parents panned out like a 1970s sitcom, Rich tangling with a randy gardener, a cake-smashing potential mum-in-law and squirming sex talk without losing his cool. Or finishing a sentence.

If he walked out he would lose a holiday he knew nothing about. It was all oddly diverting, though I couldn't buy into the fake family, as fake dad (Dominic Coleman) was a familiar face from countless comedy sketch shows. Rich, fair play to him, wasn't about to give the game away.

As any nice young men and Ben Stiller's Gaylord Focker know, meeting your beloved's parents can be an intimidating experience - no matter if they're a lovely pair of retirees or ex-CIA man Bobby De Niro. E4 spin off that film's title for this cruel show in which two separate boyfriends are introduced to their girlfriends' "families", who then act out in various amusing fashions. The winner is the one who lasts the longest without running away.