Wanted Down Under

Running for six years now, WANTED: DOWN UNDER takes some unfortunate families, gives them a week in Australia and/or New Zealand, and then poses them The Big Question of whether they want to emigrate or not. The format is shamelessly manipulative, combining elements from house- selling series, offering sentimental videos of family and friends telling them whether they should go or not, and then asking them to make 'a big decision' in 'the final vote.' No allowance has been made for the fact that the act of emigration is only the first stage in a lifelong process of adjustment; it's the first year of residence abroad, not the first week that matters. Nor do the program-makers even consider the effect of relocation on all the family members; how new schools, new houses, and new jobs actually change people. There is also the complacent assumption that, as English people resident totally in England, they will remain the same even when living in a foreign country. But then of course this is what the daytime television audience om British television wants: forget complexities.