Stop the presses! We're drinking too much. (Yawn.) If it's not the BrewDog'n'meths cocktails making you sleepy, it's probably because you've heard this a million times before. Booze makes you fat, makes you fight, makes you f-...feel unwell. The mystery is why it took an hour of Horizon: Do I Drink Too Much? (BBC2, Tuesday) to reveal that yes, you do. You awful lush.
Altogether more uplifting was Kids With Machetes: Stacey Dooley Investigates (BBC3, Tuesday); not a tour of South London primary schools but an exposé of child labour in the Ivory Coast cocoa trade the country's third-biggest export after Didier Drogba and, obviously, ivory.
True, uplifting may not have been quite the tone they were after, but Dooley a wide-eyed Lutonian of 22 with a voice like a big sparkly power drill was so irrepressibly perky it felt more like an episode of Hannah Montana (albeit one where Hannah's mates get ruthlessly worked to the bone in a field).
Her childlike demeanour on this journey to discover "the dark side of chocolate" (no, not Mars Midnight) contrasted chillingly with the thousand-yard stares of the exploited Ivorian kids. As Dooley stumbled through this dystopian Disneyworld of exploitation and hardship, also off-putting was the constant use of subtitles for locals whose English was noticeably more articulate than hers.
Still, the show had its glimmers of hope, such as the eager schoolchildren whose thirst for learning gave them at least a chance of escaping plantation poverty. And back in the UK, the genuinely good-natured Dooley put her high-pitched charms to use by raising cash to kit out an empty Ivorian classroom.
In truth, it's unlikely any but the most naïve of viewers will have learned much from the show and it's tough to imagine child labour spontaneously coming to an end while certain grim economic realities endure. But Dooley has definite potential as a voice of the underdog her sheer volume makes the girl difficult to ignore and we could all afford to think a bit more about precisely where some of our sugared goodies come from.
Oh, and the bit when Dooley got malaria was good, too. At least it kept her quiet for all of five minutes.
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Altogether more uplifting was Kids With Machetes: Stacey Dooley Investigates (BBC3, Tuesday); not a tour of South London primary schools but an exposé of child labour in the Ivory Coast cocoa trade the country's third-biggest export after Didier Drogba and, obviously, ivory.
True, uplifting may not have been quite the tone they were after, but Dooley a wide-eyed Lutonian of 22 with a voice like a big sparkly power drill was so irrepressibly perky it felt more like an episode of Hannah Montana (albeit one where Hannah's mates get ruthlessly worked to the bone in a field).
Her childlike demeanour on this journey to discover "the dark side of chocolate" (no, not Mars Midnight) contrasted chillingly with the thousand-yard stares of the exploited Ivorian kids. As Dooley stumbled through this dystopian Disneyworld of exploitation and hardship, also off-putting was the constant use of subtitles for locals whose English was noticeably more articulate than hers.
Still, the show had its glimmers of hope, such as the eager schoolchildren whose thirst for learning gave them at least a chance of escaping plantation poverty. And back in the UK, the genuinely good-natured Dooley put her high-pitched charms to use by raising cash to kit out an empty Ivorian classroom.
In truth, it's unlikely any but the most naïve of viewers will have learned much from the show and it's tough to imagine child labour spontaneously coming to an end while certain grim economic realities endure. But Dooley has definite potential as a voice of the underdog her sheer volume makes the girl difficult to ignore and we could all afford to think a bit more about precisely where some of our sugared goodies come from.
Oh, and the bit when Dooley got malaria was good, too. At least it kept her quiet for all of five minutes.
More from this column
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