I once read that glue-sniffing kills human brain cells faster than most other stupid activities. That may be a myth, but if not, I’d say glue has serious competition. I have spent much of this week watching I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and I can almost feel my brain cells perishing.
Mostly I’m baffled. How is this tatty anachronism still thriving, a series that offers all the cultural nourishment of a joke-shop plastic dog poo? It is one thin concept stretched interminably over many, many days and with a tacky theme tune that jars nearly as much as those execrable “Domino-oo-ooo” adverts. “We’re back, baby, and we are live every single night for the next three weeks,” said Ant McPartlin, 15 words to make me consider burning my TV set.
The first thing some celebrities did after arriving on the beach was to grovel on their hands and knees through a tank of animal blood, guts and offal (LOL!) while trying not to barf. Martin Kemp, you seem like a lovely man, but did the ScS sofa ads really pay that badly that you must crawl through rotten livers?
Then they climbed in a dirty van whereupon thousands of bugs rained down on them from the roof. “Oh my God, they’re biting my tits!” squealed the ex-model Kelly Brook, reminding us that her cleavage in a bikini is the money shot ITV knew would be plastered over the newspapers, and so it has proved.
Brook is clearly going for the “Celia Imrie” award after name-dropping that she once let off a terrible fart in front of Madonna while at her house in Los Angeles (Imrie broke wind on The Celebrity Traitors). OK, I admit that is a decent party icebreaker. But fish guts, eyeballs and scaring lizards … is this still how people wish to be entertained?
Well, actually yes it would appear so. Last Sunday’s launch night achieved a peak audience of 7.3 million viewers, marking ITV’s highest overnight of 2025 and the biggest entertainment launch on any channel this year. It also pulled the highest number of 16-to-34-year-olds since the 2024 Euros. So, that’s me told.
This is inconvenient for my argument that this show, on its 25th series, looks even more past its sell-by date compared with that fresh young buck The Celebrity Traitors, which in my opinion shows how modern game shows should be. By which I mean focusing on the psychological long game and not who is constipated on the dunny.
• Who should be in series two of The Celebrity Traitors? Our 19 picks
The Celebrity Traitors, with its sparkling A-list of celebrities, drew 6.1 million viewers on its launch night, although this grew to 11.7 million (impressive in the streaming age). To be fair, the line-up for I’m a Celebrity this year is not terrible, also including as it does Ruby Wax, Jack “son of Ozzy” Osbourne and the lioness Alex Scott. Wax is proving easily the best hire so far because she is funny despite burning the communal rice. But even if you once delighted in seeing people eating sheep’s vagina, aren’t you kind of over it now?
The puerile actor-themed eating games began early with Wax eating a pig’s scrotum and a bull’s penis while Angry Ginge (a YouTuber) chewed on a crocodile’s anus. LOL! ‘“Benedict Bum-berbatch!” chuckled the cheeky chappies Ant and Dec, using a pun that Crackerjack would have rejected, while more of my brain cells died.
Full disclosure: I decided long ago that I hated this template of unpalatable déjà vu slop, partly because it is dull, dull, dull, but mostly because it blithely exploits wildlife. Chris Packham once wrote to Ant and Dec, calling the show “a grotesque blot on the reputations of both yourselves and ITV”. The exploitation of animals betrays “a dangerous disconnect between a world increasingly concerned with an environmental crisis and a reckless … part of the media which doesn’t appear to give a shit”, he added. Can’t argue with that. This is a show that paid Nigel Farage a reported £1.5 million to appear two years ago and he was pretty “meh”. The sums paid this year are apparently far less (between £95,000 and £250,000), but the contestants on The Celebrity Traitors reportedly received a flat fee of between £30,000 and £40,000 — and delivered an infinitely better quality show.
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But it’s the fakeness I can’t bear. Up in their helicopters the celebrities pretended to be shocked and horrified that they would have to parachute onto the beach. “Oh no!”, “What??” they faux-gasped. Oh, please. You know very well that this happens every year and we know you have all been psychologically tested up to the armpits, so do stop insulting our intelligence.
Before long they were bonding over the campfire and weeping over family photos even though they had only been in the camp for four days. I mean, if this is your thing, crack on, but honestly I’d argue that you would have a more sophisticated time browsing willy warmers in Poundland.
Matt Smith and Sarah Greene star in The Death of Bunny Munro
CLERKENWELL FILMS/SKY UK
And now from the ridiculous to the sublime. The Death of Bunny Munro (Sky Atlantic) is the best TV drama I have seen in months. It is depraved, shocking, funny, depressing, heartbreaking, operatically discomforting and absolutely beautiful. It is a work of art and although Matt Smith puts in the performance of his life as the sex addict Bunny Munro, Rafael Mathé is equally as good as his adorable, neglected son, Bunny Jr.
The child punches his weight as hard as the titular antihero in this morality tale of a chaotic father and his son who go on the run from social services in Brighton after Bunny Jr’s mother hangs herself. Give that boy a Bafta. Give them both one.
Bunny Munro is a charismatic but selfish hedonist who lives on booze, drugs and shagging bored housewives, to whom he tries to sell face creams as a door-to-door salesman. To give you an idea of how low he will sink, during his wife’s funeral he becomes aroused by the sight of a nipple on a painting of Mary feeding baby Jesus and leaves his nine-year-old son alone while he goes to the church lavatory to masturbate furiously. (I did not envy Smith filming this scene. It lasts a long, long time.)
He takes his grieving child to strip joints and attends to his sore, infected eyes by making him wear sunglasses (the boy is thrilled). The older Bunny idolised his own terrible, selfish father (David Threlfall) and the younger in turn worships his own chaotic dad, but all the while knowing that his needs are not being met. Karma comes calling.
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It is adapted from the novel by Nick Cave and features some of his wonderful music (Bright Horses at the end comes like a punch to the guts) — he also makes a cameo appearance. Smith’s performance put me in mind of Benedict Cumberbatch’s in Patrick Melrose (his finest hour, in my opinion) for its exceptionality. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
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