mdpomroy

There's a group of Fox TV executives sitting around a boardroom table wondering what new show to commission.

'How about aiming for something like 24 or The West Wing?' says one of them, but they all agree it would be too expensive, and cheap TV is less likely to harm the station if it flops.

'Well, how about getting together some great comedy writers and doing a quality sitcom?' offers another and is fired on the spot. 'Don't you know good writers cost lots of money!' the big chief barks. 'That's why we invented reality TV.'

'We could do yet another crime drama...' suggests a man in a bland suit. 'I'm listening...' the boss replies, suddenly interested. 'People like CSI, so let's do another copy of that,' Blandman adds.

'But there are already far too many CSI clones out there, what can we do to make ours stand out?' a naive junior enquires and is sacked instantly. 'Stand out! If we do that people may be confused! Let's give them more of what they already like!' the big chief screams.

'Let's just add more violence and make it really grisly, we are Fox after all,' another suit suggests to a hearty reply of 'now you're getting it', from the big chief. 'We could make them the Deviant Crimes Unit,' he goes on to add, clearly on a roll.

'By Jove, he's got it!' the big chief laughs, 'and the victims could be beautiful and vulnerable women who wear very little on screen.' 'Well that would certainly distract people from the average acting and poor scripts,' Blandman points out.

'Then it's settled, we just need a name,' the big chief announces. 'We could call it Sex Cops Violence?'

'Too literal, how about Killer Instinct…it conveys violence, but sounds a bit like Basic Instinct which had lots of sex.'

'Puuurfect', the big chief replies and then they all slap each other on the back and go and cancel Arrested Development.

There was a time when the only reality show on television was the news, and the rest of the schedule was full of fiction. Now it seems there's little but 'reality ' on the box, while conversely some of the most entertaining and comical fiction is on Fox News. The edges have become very blurred and Criss Angel – Mindfreak does little to clarify things.

It's billed as a reality show about a magician, who's also a member of a heavy metal band. It also showcases his music, live street magic, some behind-the-curtain preparation and his family life. Part Marilyn Manson, part David Blaine with a touch of Alan Partridge, we follow Angel around as he spouts mystical nonsense, including this gem: 'A lot of what I do is completely real. There are no tricks. It really is the mind, body, and spirit connection. And a lot of what I do is an illusion. It's up to you to determine what is real and what is... illusion.' As well as talking like a tipsy teenage goth at a Ouija board party, he does some impressive tricks and stunts. These include levitation, setting himself on fire – to 'honour' his mother on her 70th birthday – and lying on a bed of nails as a Hummer drives over him. If you like magic tricks and the colour black, this show should entertain.

He may well look and talk like the sort of person you'd never get tired of punching, but as tricksters go he's one of the best. The Academy of Magical Arts at Hollywood's Magic Castle – a place so pretentious it's powered entirely by the magicians' sense of self-importance – named him 2005 Magician of the Year. Angel is so confident in his abilities, he once publicly challenged magic's other infant terrible David Blaine, saying if Blaine could perform a trick that he couldn't replicate on the spot then he would retire. Somewhat tellingly, Blaine never took up the challenge, although to be fair, Criss is yet to live in a box for 40 days and be abused by Londoners.

Most of the tricks have been done before by the likes of Penn & Teller (who are friends of Criss) but all the same, some of these stunts are really great fun. That is, unless you watched one of those 'magician's tricks revealed' series and you'll know how a lot of them were done. For those who didn't peek behind the curtain, this won't freak your mind as the title promises, but it will set it off thinking about how he did it. And these days, a TV programme that makes you think is a rare trick indeed.

After years in the Hollywood wilderness, Kirstie Alley returned to the public eye when she put on lots of weight. The former Cheers star used that negative publicity and wrote a semi-autobiographical sitcom about her battle against being 'too fat for TV'

If you type, 'fat jokes' into Google and hit search it comes back with a hefty 172,000 results. If you do the same search for, 'why fat people should be treated with respect and not mocked for looking like a walrus with legs' it comes back with nothing at all. This is no coincidence.

We love to laugh at the rotund, the bulbous, the porky-chops, but despite the popular convention they are not all jolly. For a fat actress it's a miserable, tough slog getting work simply because network executives, more often than not, hire thin women for lead roles. This is what happened to former Cheers and Veronica's Closet star Kirstie Alley. And with no meaty roles coming her way she lost confidence and evidently got stuck into lots of meaty rolls of her own. When the media noticed that she had ballooned in weight, tipping the scales at nearly 300 pounds, they started featuring her on the cover of their magazines and metaphorically poking her with the always unfair 'ewww gross, you're not thin' stick.

Alley's response was to co-write and co-produce her own semi-fictional sitcom about life as a fat actress who's struggling to get work in Hollywood. The result is pretty much a cross between the outstanding mockumentary Curb Your Enthusiasm and diet-based reality show You Are What You Eat. In other words, Curb Your Eating. That's pretty much what the plot here is all about, following the first episode where Kirstie meets with president of NBC Jeff Zucker only to find out that he thinks she's too fat for TV, thus sending her on a mission to lose weight and get back on the box. Jeff Zucker is played by Jeff Zucker, the real president of NBC which just adds to the twisted reality of the show, as Jeff's a man who's no doubt done this for real a hundred times.

Also appearing as themselves are Kid Rock, Rhea Perlman (Carla from Cheers), Carmen Electra and Kirstie's fellow scientologists John Travolta and Leah Remini. However in 2006, Alley expressed some disenchantment with scientology, pointing out that it was of no help in her attempts to lose weight, and ultimately she turned to diet guru Jenny Craig. She has since been something of a poster women for her diets. In Fat Actress, there's a scene when Alley gets excited after her agent calls with a job offer, thinking someone has overlooked her size when casting, but ends up screaming in despair when the job turns out to be diet guru Jenny Craig wanting her as a spokesperson. Sometimes it's hard to see where the acting ends and the real Kirstie begins. For much of the time what you see is entirely unscripted and in many ways this is half of the appeal. You also get an eerie feeling that many of the things you see could well have actually taken place in the not-to-distant past. John Travolta (Alley's co-star in the Look Who's Talking movies) has a cameo in the first episode and a desperate Alley tries to convince him that there's some mileage in Look Who's Talking 4: 'But we haven't explored all the possibilities,' she begs. 'We haven't done talking cats.'

After a while, the string of fat jokes does wear a little thin, but there are some great set pieces and genuinely funny scenes even if Alley is too over the top on occasions and at times it can get a little bit uncomfortable. It's one thing watching her scream at her bathroom scales, wrestle with stretch pants that won't give enough or even cruise doughnut shops in hope of getting picked up by 'big-butt-loving black men', but when she starts munching on laxatives and shoving fingers down her throat you begin to wonder if she really did all these things behind closed doors. The comedy attracted a lot of criticism from eating disorder groups who were angered that it showed Alley making herself sick after binge eating, but that somewhat misses the point. It's not sitcoms like this that lead people to eating disorders, it's more often a result of the body fascism in society that's perpetuated by magazines and the Hollywood system that Alley herself is battling against.

If anything, there is poignancy buried deep in the utter debasement and humiliation that she pours upon herself for big belly laughs. It's a strange, post-modern and mostly truthful take on an actress and her real problems and at times it's very funny. A big slap on the back and fair play to Kirstie for using her talents to write, produce and star in a comedy that gets her back on the small screen by using the situation that kept her off it for so long. Sure, she went on Oprah to cry about her life, like every other 'troubled' and fading star, but this way she had something new to plug while talking. As a result, her appearance was almost a triumphant declaration of defiance and I'm sure she would have 'done a Cruise' and jumped over the sofa if only she didn't weigh more than the sofa in the first place.

Fat Actress is worth checking out, despite its faults. There are only seven episodes in the first series and no sign of a second being made, but no matter, it's a fine romp as it is. Any more would be overindulgence.