Colin Hogg: Oldies give reality a run for its money

Liz Smith (clockwise from top left), Lionel Blair, Dickie Bird, Sylvia Syms, Derek Jameson and Kenneth Kendall. Photo / BBC

Pseudo-medical Young Ones throws spotlight on senior celebs.

Dan, the fluttery new weatherman on TV One's six o'clock news, says Kapiti just like cuppa tea, so he is trying. Really he's very trying indeed with all his arm waving and wild talk of temperatures competing with each other.

He's quite putting me off the weather. From out here, he looks like he'd be more at home conducting a small orchestra and I hope he finds one soon. Or maybe he could find a spot on a reality show.

There are so many different versions of reality according to television now it's just a matter of time before there's one for weather presenters.

Rather late on Sunday night, Prime screened an odd new angle on the reality show concept called The Young Ones, which borrows the title of the cult 1980s UK TV series for something maybe even more confronting than the confrontational original.

With this show, the "Young" word comes in a different font and dripping with irony because here the stars are a collection of decrepit British celebrities, obviously prepared to do almost anything to get back into the spotlight.

Though this series does come all dressed up in serious intent, being pitched as a pseudo-medical experiment exploring whether simulating the past can trick old people into feeling young again.

According to the series presenter, the splendidly-monickered Mariella Frostrup, experiments have suggested it might just work. Or, as her scientific sidekick put it, "If you bring back resurgent memories then your body will follow where your mind has gone."

And, in a wild swing at testing the theory, this crazy show's makers chose 1975 as ground zero and rustled up the earthly remains of half a dozen once-famous old things from those days, all of them now in their 70s and 80s.

There are a couple of old actresses, Sylvia Syms, 76, with her bad back and weight problem, and Liz Smith, 88, an eccentric old thing who said she missed "the buzz" and "I wish I was not in the middle of right now" with a sad smile, though she may have been acting of course.

Then there was the old cricket umpire Dickie Bird, 77, who'd had a stroke and suffered from loneliness, and the campy old dancer Lionel Blair, living in denial of being old at all and unwilling to talk about his age, though records suggest he's in his mid-80s.

Along with Derek Jameson, a shaky old tabloid editor, and 86-year-old veteran TV newsreader Kenneth Kendall, they've all been banged up for the series in a country house made over to replicate 1975, down to the SodaStream machine and the cabinet TV.

Lionel screamed about the "awful wallpaper" in his bedroom and said "sleeping in purple sheets is ghastly", but loved his blazer. By the end of the first episode, Dickie seemed perkier and shuffly Derek turned out to be quite handy when a shelf fell down in the blood-red kitchen.

The show's more fun and a little more realistic than the usual reality show, but there's a danger Lionel will want to dance and that Liz might just lose the last of the marbles before it's over.

On which subject, this is my last column. It's been a scream.