TV BBC One's morning strip of daytime television should under normal circumstances be avoided like all hyper-addictive substances. Each utilises a similar structure of only ever presenting a snippet of a given "story" which forces the viewer to keep watching in order to discover what happened next. In the case of Homes Under The Hammer, we're shown the house, which is up for sale, the auction, we're introduced to purchasers and we're then made to wait half an hour to see if they've turned it into property gold, which if we're not careful we do. Even if it's a repeat.
Don't Get Done Get Dom takes that to a kind of hyperpleptic level, as between smaller consumer outrages, a complaint about a company spins onward for three quarters of an hour through minutes of padding in which the given consumer advice orientated problem is reiterated several times, presenter Dominic Littlewood is seen to make dozens of phone calls until eventually and usually the company puts out a statement of apology with some compensation for the given client. Which we'll still sit and watch and wait and wait and wait for, all the while tutting at the incompetence of the given company.
Yesterday's Don't Get Done Get Dom was a perfect example. A couple have a horrible holiday at Pontins after being given a chalet which judging by the photos looks unbearable, unlivable. Complaining at the time led to an upgrade to even worse accommodation. They complain, don't get anywhere, contact the BBC, and so the shows usual process of phone calls and padding and repetition begins. Except, none of it works. None of it. Dom's offering his usual "I'm from the BBC, hello!" and Pontins don't care.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01sfj8k/Dont_Get_Done_Get_Dom_Series_7_Holiday_Parks/
That's a link to the programme. Thanks to the iplayer you can skip most of it. Essentially what Pontins, whose representative will be familiar to fans of a 90s docusoap about a hotel in Liverpool, do is break the format. They stonewall Littlewood, as phone calls go unanswered, messages are ignored and his usual final game-changing gambit of speaking to the CEO of the company gets him nowhere (I've only seen the odd episode by the way) (honestly).
Why does Pontins react like this? Is it because they don't know the format? If this had been Watchdog would they have had the same reaction? Do they realise that their target audience are just the sort of people who might watch daytime television? Either way, it's a rare example of a company not bending over backwards when someone from a BBC consumer advice show phones their press office with a list of demands, which makes it addictive television for a whole other set of reasons.
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