Talking Telly: Getting ready for ‘I’m A Celebrity…’

It’s either a really great week for you if you’re an American fan of British TV, if you’re into anything from drama to sci-fi to shameless celebrity famewhoredom. And really, that’s how British TV is largely broken up into these days.

First off, the last “Doctor Who” for David Tennant before his regeneration saga begins. It’s supposed to be the scariest ever. I used to have people who would watch the show before me to warn me if the show was particularly freaky that week, but my people have been laid off due to the economy. I’ve gotta toughen up before John Simm comes back anyway.

Secondly, AMC’s attempt to do an American remake of “The Prisoner” debuts. Reviews are very radically mixed on it. Personally, I think that any show starring Sir Ian McKellen should get an automatic 12-episode pickups, but what do I know? And if anyone could do a proper remake of a British show, it would probably be AMC, because, well, watch “Mad Men”. But it’s also one of those shows where you wonder if it could ever improve up0n the original and also know the original’s only a trip from Netflix away.

If neither of those options is for you, fancy a horrible recut of “The Boat That Rocked” in the cinema? Also, there’s a lot of time to be spent analyzing why John and Edward are still on “The X Factor.” But the thing I’m personally excited about because it’s the first weekend of the 9th series of “I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!” And somehow it’s still succeeding where “Big Brother” has now failed to stay revved up for top ratings and a great time slot.

I actually love this show enough to do a semi-daily recap. But I know that love of celebrity reality shows in the US is much different. We like to see a VH1 show once or twice a week instead of almost every single night for three weeks. Plus Ant and Dec might put up a TRO on me just for talking about them too much.

So here’s the list of contestants, and what they’ve done that you might remember if you watch anything British (and really great if you stream it live and thus actually watching things like the soaps and snooker because they seem to be kinda unavoidable.

Samantha Fox: Like the Pet Shop Boys, I actually discovered her via American pop radio circa 1990. I had absolutely had no idea why naughty girls need love too, but that song’s on a mixtape somewhere.
Stuart Manning of Hollyoaks, and before that the winner of “Hero of the Year” at the British Soap Awards. He just left Hollyoaks. Not hard to look at.
Lucy Benjamin formerly of EastEnders. And if you’ve ever watched much EastEnders in the past few years, you’ve seen her. If nothing else, remember Who Shot Phil? However, this show’s a bit of a step down in reputation from Kingdom, RIP. Seeing all these soap stars makes me think they’re hoping for some soapy drama. Anything’s better than WAG’s
Sabrina Washington, formerly of Mis-Teeq, the Brit version of Destiny’s Child. Anyone who made it through a few years with Alesha Dixon has to have some good stories. But a question mark as far as show potential (i.e. why they stay in the jungle after the WAG’s started leaving.)
Gino D’Acampo, who has hosted a ton of British cooking shows. A bit controversial because he claims to cook vegan whilst using parmesan in dishes. I’m sure that they’re hoping that he’ll get into a war of wills with Kim Woodburn over household stuff. REALLY easy on the eyes. He has the potential to actually make the rice and beans the celebs live off of sound tasty.
Justin Ryan and Colin McAllister, interior designers and Scottish reality TV presenters in Canada. Oh, and married for 22 years. Basically Prop 8′s nightmare. I really haven’t seen them before, but on paper they sound a lot like John Barrowman, who would totally do this show if he didn’t want to ever be on “Doctor Who” again.
George Hamilton, and if you don’t know who he is, you really need to watch more “I Love The ’70′s” reruns. Will have the best tan no matter what else happens. Also connected with enough drama queens (Alana Stewart) to have juicy gossip.
Kim Woodburn of How Clean Is Your House? Basically, whomever is on her team is in for a world of hurt. She will try to clean the Aussie jungle.
Camilla Dallerup, professional dancer formerly on “Strictly Come Dancing.” Also formerly engaged to Brendan Cole, who has probably become the most famous of the SCD enterouge. A big question mark.
Jimmy White, HUGE  snooker star and an MBE. I’m a darts girl, but he’s easily the biggest British star to more generations than any other contestant. In his Wikipedia entry. it says he’s had branded video games all the way from the Atari ST to XBox, so he’s kinda a snooker Madden, of sorts.

Although no one else will, I will continue to reserve some hope that Katie Price won’t actually be dropped into camp during the first week. And until six months ago, I liked Katie and Peter. The only way I’d be happy with this is if Kerry Katona were going too. At this point they’d approach Spencer and Heidi levels of annoyance and would get booted from camp in two nights.

I have to give the producers of “I’m A Celebrity…” some credit here. After Speidi (and thank you for not importing THEM, ITV) were so ridiculously bad that people watched just to see how low they could go, there would be a temptation to go for all-Jordan’s. Last year’s version was much more of a name-dropper year with Martina Navratilova and George Takei. This year looks a little more like the year before, with Christopher Biggens, Cerys Matthews and Janice Dickinson. Some of them have fan bases like Jimmy White and George Hamilton will, and they were fun. And no David Van Day. It was a good year and genuine fun.

That was also a really good year for Ant and Dec. It would be pretty hard to watch this show if you’re and AnD hater, because they completely hog the show and that’s half of its charm.

Anyway, I’ll probably be Tweeting about the show a lot at @danadoestv a lot for the next few weeks. Sadly, probably not in real time unless I got a job on the West Coast in the next 48 hours and worked the night shift. If you have a home business or could set your own hours just to watch a live feed at 3 pm every afternoon, you are so lucky. This is a show that you can’t TiVo and read the British press at the same time.

Also, the companion show, “I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here Now!” is going to be tracking Tweets for all of the contestants and their mentions in Tweets, which is a really great idea. Keep up with it here.