The Best Of Daytime TV

For a student with a television and a whole lot of work to do, there is no better day than one spent watching tacky Daytime TV. Rhy Brignell runs her countdown of the shows you need to watch instead of starting those Week 12 essays…

#4 Ice Road Truckers (Seen on Channel 5)

Though I’m not sure this show still runs on T.V., Ice Road Truckers just had to make it into my top four daytime shows. Ice Road Truckers is primarily aimed at manly-men who don’t have emotions and are only interested in beards, trucks, ice, and being burly manly-men.

I personally love this show for that reason, as it provides a simpler outlook on life, with viewers often believing that the only thing in the world that matters is whether the beardy manly-man will make it across the ice without dying in the process.

The producers decided to include a female trucker in the series, for two blatantly obvious (if misguided) reasons: 1) women couldn’t possibly like a show this manly, and so they have to include a women on the off chance that other women might actually find the show interesting, and 2) certain men watching the show (and at times, myself) like to shout at her for doing her job badly because she doesn’t have a penis and therefore can’t drive a big truck like the beardy manly-men can.

The show has developed more recently into Ice Road Truckers: Deadliest Roads, where we see the manly-men travel across distant lands hauling their precious and often unethical cargo.

The best scene so far has been when two truckers got stuck in a swamped muddy village and do absolutely nothing about it, short of sitting on their fat arses in the cab watching the poor villagers try and pull them out.

Ice Truckers is a show that will be missed by many, as it was of the rare shows on daytime which was actually not aimed at single mothers with no jobs.

#3 Don’t Tell the Bride (Seen on Really, BBC3)

This show is aimed more at the young female demographic of the country. Husbands-to-be are given free reign over weddings, with the bride-to-be being shipped off for three weeks whilst her hubby spends the £12,000 as they please.

Most the time, the men on this show are tools that, despite knowing exactly what their brides don’t want, go ahead and do it anyway. Either that or they blow half of it on a piss-up stag do, leaving about a tenner for the rest of the wedding.

Don’t Tell the Bride features many tears and tantrums as the bride inevitably does not get her chosen wedding dress, colour scheme, venue or guests. Whilst I’m watching the show I wonder why in the seven levels of hell these pedantic women would ever let their tool partners take control over the wedding they had always dreamed of, only to watch it spiral down in ashes at their feet (there is a Magaluf wedding, I kid you not).

However, Don’t Tell the Bride usually ends well after all the tears, as the Bride usually loves what their husbands have done for them, and after all, they are still centre of attention and that is evidently all that matters.

#2 Cheaters (seen on Really)

‘Really’ delivers again with this one. Presented by a pretentious greying man in a non-descript suit, Cheaters is a diamond of daytime T.V. Though originally on later at night, repeats of the show can be caught around 11am on ‘Really’.

Cheaters sees distraught partners asking for help with their unfaithful partner from Joey Greco and his team of “detectives”. Greco being an a-hole is often what makes this show, providing sarcastic and highly amusing quips directed at the lower class people around him, which often make me wonder why no-one has actually punched him and his stupid little beard in the face yet.

Despite rumours that most of the show is staged, there have been some golden T.V. moments that will stay with me for the rest of my life – the clown orgy being my personal favourite. Check it out on youtube if you can, it will not disappoint.

#1 The Jeremy Kyle Show (seen on ITV)

The Jeremy Kyle Show has got to be the #1 gem of daytime, being a show that most people either hate to love or love to hate. As I’m sure most Brits are aware, the show is essentially an hour or so of another pretentious greying man in a non-descript suit, hurling abuse at people for making bad life decisions, or for generally just being poorer than he is.

When watching the show, I can’t help but feel that the producers must have some sort of checklist before they allow guests on the show, the first point being that the guest must have more kids than teeth.

The main reason I love this show is because it makes me feel better about my own life, by realising that things could be worse and I could be someone that would actually consider The Jeremy Kyle Show to be a solution to my problems.The show appeals to people that really should have and probably do have better things to do with their time (including me).

It is actually sponsored by ‘Foxy Bingo’ which always provides entertainment when the ad is followed by Jezza shouting at someone for wasting ‘tax-payers money’. It is also highly ironic and hypocritical as Jezza himself was once addicted to gambling.

Highlights include: Graham coming on and generally saving the day with his infinite wisdom, ‘put something on the end of it’ and ‘at the end of the day’, and more recently, the addition of Jezza going backstage after successfully (!) solving a dispute talking directly into the camera about how great he is and how amazing his show is.

In short, if you don’t take daytime T.V. too seriously, it can actually be quite entertaining and make you laugh – providing of course you aren’t watching Loose Women.