OTV: BOX-FRESH: WATCHING BRIEF: A SLIPPERY CUSTOMER

• Published in: The Observer (London)
• Main Author: Stephanie Merritt, Vanessa Thorpe, orota Nosowicz
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: London (UK) Guardian News & Media Limited 29.06.2003
• ISSN: 0029-7712

Yet it's not clear from this first episode quite where the programme intends to place itself. There's no canned laughter and some serious themes, placing it towards the Cold Feet end of the graph; on the other hand, it's a sitcom in as far as much of the dark humour results from a series of mishaps and uneccesarily complicated situations that breed yet more absurd misunderstandings as fast as an episode of Fawlty Towers , but there's an odd incoherence to them, as if the speed of the drama doesn't allow for any background. Thus we never quite understand why Paul's youngest son, Edwin, isn't at school, nor why his father's only response to this is to shout ineffectually, nor why his middle son, Dan, has ordered 32 fridge freezers to be delivered to the front drive, nor why Dan gets away with shagging his older brother Rory's girlfriend within broad earshot of Rory and the girlfriend's parents. The idea, presumably, is to give the fragmented, impressionistic view that Paul has of his own life, where everything adds to the general unreason and chaos, but at times this comes across rather as if the comic scenarios came first and have just been strung together without much of a plot. TRAVELS OF A GRINGO, SUNDAY, CHANNEL 4, 11.10PM In the 1980s, the International Monetary Fund loaned Argentina $150 billion on condition that it removed all trade barriers, privatised state industries and opened its financial markets to foreign investors. These are the free market policies behind globalisation and what has drawn journalist Sean Langan (pictured) to South America. In the first programme of this three-parter, Langan begins the same journey as Che Guevara made 50 years ago. His quest is to assess the impact of globalisation on ordinary people and their lives.