10 Years Younger: The Challenge (Channel 4)
One of the Most Vile TV shows gets a Horrible New Makeover
Feb 12, 2009
Usually it’s customary to start an article with a really catchy intro that draws your reader in so they will continue until the end. Not this time, this gets a basic opinion from the outset - 10 Years Younger ranks as one of the worst TV programmes ever conceived and proves that as far as entertainment is concerned there are no morals. But regardless of this it has somehow reached a sixth series.
New Format but Same Old Routine
The format this year pits two people (usually women) against each other - one having plastic surgery and the other adopting a more traditional approach of a good old scrub and covering the cracks with make-up. Maybe this is a way of the producers saying “look, there’s more to us than surgery” or to regain some morality but it comes across as nothing more than a gimmick.
On the February 13 episode 41-year-old Samantha Harris dreams of working in a top salon apparently no-one wants to employ a woman with saggy eye-lids and wrinkly skin. Meanwhile, ex-navy lad David, 58, looks uncannily like a 58-year-old man and wants a woman in his life that isn’t attracted to someone who actually looks his age and still has lots of his own hair but is slightly toothless. Don’t worry though; you can get some new ones.
You can see where this is going. Cue that classic scene where members of the public recoil in horror at their appearance, and are given the chance to sneer and be cruel about the emotionally crippled victim and saying they look 60. It's such fun...
Expert Nicky Hambleton-Jones replaced by the Over-exposed Myleene Klass
10 Years Younger itself has had a makeover, replacing long time host Nicky Hambleton-Jones with the younger Myleene Klass, who just seems to be everywhere at the moment. She’s fronting an endless amount of TV shows, she’s on the book shelves, she’s in your adverts, she’s on the radio and she’s in your music, despite the fact that her only talent is that she happens to be a rather accomplished pianist. Oh, and she looks good in a bikini; that’s the important one isn’t it?
Appearance is everything. That’s right kids, don’t spend your early days getting an education or actually learning anything just focus on looking good and you too can be a star.
Okay, Nicky Hambleton-Jones is an attractive woman and that certainly helped her get the job but at least she has years of experience in fashion and genuine knowledge about the subject, Myleene just strolls around the place bleating: “Oh, that’s nice”. Her compassion (if you can call it that) was patronising and full of false emotion; it would be more human to stick a robot on screen. Nicky was nasty but her icy visage had presence.
10 Years Younger is TV at its most Degraded
Put simply 10 Years Younger is TV at its most vile. TV that says “want to get ahead in life, have plastic surgery you ugly sod” and in this new format is trying to disguise this with the make-up alternative. It is the sort of cruel, shallow exhibition you would expect a beauty obsessed Hollywood to produce, not Britain. Yes the people end up looking better but at the expense of their dignity.
This image bullying and fashion fascism trend that has taken by lot of TV is appalling and here’s hoping they themselves become unstylish soon. The only positive about Trinny and Susannah et al is that even though they confirm to the idea that image is everything they don’t encourage members of the public that chopping bits of themselves is the way to go like 10 Years Younger does. Not only that but this is very very dull.
10 Year Younger is on Channel 4 every Thursday at 8pm. Repeats can be seen on 4oD.
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