How to look good naked
Channel 4, 8pm
Chinese school
BBC4, 9pm
HAD you noticed that Gok Wan had been away? I'm not sure I had, but I suppose what matters is that he's now officially back (so soon?) in one of the few Channel 4 shows that still reflects something of the station's original ethos. So hoo-di-hoo! A new series of How to Look Good Naked! It's camp! It's populist and popular! It's streetwise, amiably frothy, instructive without being preachy, rudely matey - and it'll genuinely make you feel good about yourself if you're down, body-image-wise. Go, Gok Wan!
A pair of vaguely irksome young women have been recruited as sub-presenters to give the show's format a minor facelift after three seasons in the space of two years. Rebecca, a slightly horsey blonde, and Carole, a stiff with brunette curls, will be getting assorted ordinary women to test beauty products. Fine. Problem is, Rebecca and Carole both read the autocue as if. The only thing. They. Usually read. Is Written In. Very short. And unthinking sentences. Like Heat. Magazine.
There's another new tweak, in that every week the show will be persuading groups of regular folk to overcome their hang-ups about their physicality and shed all their clothes for a nude photo-shoot, leading to the eventual assembly of a How to Look Good Naked calendar. Which explains how Gok Wan managed to overcome the douce ladies of St Albans Slimming Club, with a cry of: "Take your top off! You're about to get nuddy naked!" Providing empowerment through submission to tastefully shot soft porn - it's a grand new British tradition.
Otherwise, How to Look Good Naked just allowed Gok Wan to get on with doing what Gok Wan does best, ie employing his trademark brand of breezy all-girls-together power to chide women sympathetically about their bodies. This entails him referring to breasts as "bad boys" or "bangers", suddenly embracing his makeover targets while urging: "First, let's hug each other till we fart," and ranging around busy city streets asking female passers-by if he can kiss their stretch marks (whoops, make that "lady-lines" in positive Gok-speak). Subtle, How to Look Good Naked ain't. Enlighten its subjects, though, it does.
Different lessons were on offer in Chinese School, a plain-spoken new Open University documentary series. If you wanted facts, Chinese School had loads. China's education system is presently processing 250 million schoolchildren. A nation that encompasses 235 languages is served by 435,000 primary schools. In the rural province of Anhui, the wider setting for Chinese School, 560,000 high-school students annually pursue 240,000 university places.
In the small Anhui town of Xiuning, high-school high-flyers start their day at 6am by reading their different set texts out loud together, cacophony being reckoned the best way to learn by heart. The rest of the students' day involves aerobics, eye exercises, sport and 10 hours of lessons, concluding at half-past midnight after two further hours of private study.
There were more subtle insights into the ruthless nature of China's education system, too. For example, there was the middle-school pupil who quoted a Ming emperor ("Happiness is not true happiness - only happiness from suffering is true"). Saddest and scariest of all was the sight of the tear-stained primary-school seven-year-old who will never make holes in his eraser again, after having been made to wear a holey jumper and apologise for his rubber transgression to each of his classmates. Chinese School: lessons in monolithic suppression. Free Tibet!
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