Shotgun, please.

You know, I try to be a fair-minded and impartial individual and it occurred to me that I was perhaps a little premature in describing Don’t Scare The Hare as ‘almost indescribably asinine’ the other day. It wasn’t as if I’d seen the whole thing (although, because it was on immediately preceding Doctor Who, I did tune in and catch most of it simply to ensure the BBC didn’t suddenly change the schedule and start Who fifteen or twenty minutes early without warning – well, it could happen), and you know, keep an open mind.

So I i-Playered the damn thing and had another of my HWEEEAAAA-EEEEEE-AAAAAA-EEEEAAARGGHHHH moments because, I promise you, it is much, much worse than I may have led you to believe.

I'm with stupid.

 

The premise is that the moron pictured above lives in a studio-set forest with his animatronic hare, who loves carrots and is incredibly nervous. Teams of people with nothing better to do and/or a shameless desire to get money no matter what the cost to their dignity compete in deeply stupid games the object of which is to score points without – and here’s the gimmick – ‘scaring the hare’. If the hare is scared it runs off, a bit, and the audience (presumably of drug-addled people with no sense of purpose or self-respect left) chant ‘Don’t scare the hare’ like members of a particularly avant-garde religious cult.

For an animatronic lepine the hare is pretty bloody skittish, as it is sent into full flight by things like eggs breaking and frogs croaking. Get a grip on yourself, for God’s sake, hare. And is it even sensible for a fake animal with such obviously deep-seated psychological problems to be kept in a TV studio? Get rid of the hare and everything would be much more chilled out (and over considerably quicker, which would be the real bonus).

What makes the whole experience much, much worse is that someone involved has, amazingly, realised that it looks like a terrible day-glo kids programme with adults forced to take part and no sensible person over the age of seven would dream of actually watching it out of choice. Now in this situation you or I would scrap the whole project and make something actually possessing some kind of merit – a new run of Pets Win Prizes, I don’t know – but the great brains behind DSTH have opted to make it terribly arch and knowing rather in the style of Total Wipeout, but without the redeeming element of seeing posturing overconfident idiots made to look ridiculous, fall in water and experience actual physical injury. Sue Perkins narrates this crock. I used to respect Sue Perkins back when she was in Mel and Sue but now she’s doing this and that thing with the guy who doesn’t like to be edited and, you know, what happened to you, Sue? You used to be cool. Well, cooler than this.

I mean, if this is an attempt to cover all bases and appeal to a mass audience by making what’s to all intents and purposes a kid’s show populated entirely by adults, why not go all the way and a produce a hard-hitting police procedural about a serial killer preying on sex workers, and guarantee that vital younger demographic by casting pre-teens as all the detectives? That would be about as good an idea as Don’t Scare The Hare.

I mean come on BBC, what’s wrong with you? I didn’t give you too hard a time over Outcasts being dreadful and I’m willing to forget all the fuss you made about the Royal You-Know-What now the bloody thing’s actually over and done with, but this show is very nearly inexcusable. This is supposed to be your hook for the whole of Saturday night, the thing that lands the audience for the evening and bequeaths it to all the shows that follow. And what do we get? A poorly-conceived farrago about a bald guy who’s friends with a psychologically damaged remote-control woodland creature, almost entirely without redeeming features (well, one of the contestants was pretty cute in the episode I watched, but I doubt she’s going to be a regular feature).

BBC, could it be that you think putting this on before Doctor Who will just make people appreciate its quality more? You don’t need to bother doing things like that, I think we all know what’s what. (Although the fact the BBC1 audience triples when DSTH finishes and Doctor Who starts tells you everything you need to know.)

It does occur to me that the audience for DSTH may be largely made up of Doctor Who fans like myself who feel compelled to tune in a bit early just in case the BBC does decide to start the transmission twenty minutes early without telling anyone. In which case I expect you’re thinking that we have no-one but ourselves to blame, and I can kind of see where you’re coming from on that. Even so, it’s a steep price to pay. Thank God for the mute button.