Meet The Parents @9.30pm- E4- 2 out of 10

Bloody hell, where to start with this huge pile of steaming sub-par excuse for television entertaintment? Let's start with the premise I suppose.

The idea of the show is that a girl takes her boyfriend to go meet her parents for the first time, a terrifying experience anyway, but, hey, let's make it even worse for these poor saps. Let's replace the girlfriend's family with actors and put the lad in horrendously, cringey situations. If he can survive five hours in the family home, he wins a holiday to an unspecified destination, Butlins before it closes perhaps.

Standby for an incredibly long list of criticisms.

Firstly, if I had been going out with a girl for eight months and I had not met her family, that's not the best pretext

Secondly, if I had been going out with a girl for eight months, a fair amount of time, and it looked as if it was a long lasting relationship, I'd be pretty hacked off if she thought it would be a jolly jape to fuck around with the first meeting with the potential in-laws. I'd probably be within my rights to tell her to bugger off after the show has finished and go on that Butlins holiday on my own and get an STD while I'm there.

Thirdly, if you are going to create these awkward cringey situations, at least make them appear believable to anyone with more than three brain cells. The gardener getting off with the mum? The hippy sister? The uptight, headmaster of a father? These are characters and situations from a sub-MTV (whisper it, sub-4 Music?) sitcom, and even in that they wouldn't be at all believable.

Fourthly, giving a young woman, who may well be in love with their boyfriend, the incentive for a holiday at the expense of the humiliation of their other half smacks a bit of exploitation. Perhaps welcomed exploitation but it appears to be taking advantage of a young woman by bribing her without thinking of the potential damage it can do to her relationship

Right, what else can I pick holes in about this show? The acting is at about the level of Hollyoaks, the voiceover man builds everything up beyond belief. Even the bloody font of the little countdown clock gets on my nerves.

Overall, whilst not having the best ethical grounding, this show could have worked if done properly. Instead, it's been put together to be as over-the-top as possible and rather than the situations the boyfriends are in being cringey, the whole show is one great big toe-curler.