Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away: A huge hello to TV’s biggest stars
Memo to the supersized stars of Channel 5’s important documentary Too Fat To Work... try becoming a High Court enforcement agent. You’d be just the job.
Can't Pay? We'll Take It Away
Memo to the supersized stars of Channel 5’s important documentary Too Fat To Work... try becoming a High Court enforcement agent. You’d be just the job.
These are the glorified bailiffs strutting their stuff on TV’s everyday story of debt collection and desperation Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away. Massive men for whom extreme fatness is no barrier to their uplifting work distributing despair wherever they go.
It’s easy to question why anyone would want to make a programme about misery and money troubles. But while the giant agents go about their grim business it’s morbidly fascinating. Sad but true.
It’s also highly amusing as our huge heroes try to paint themselves as sympathetic characters who really care about the poor people they’re putting on the streets. The more they talk themselves up, the less you believe them.
Unfair to call every single one of the High Court’s tubby team fat. Some of them are no more than plump. But vast trainee Ian Taylor would be the biggest evictor in town. If it wasn’t for the enormous Brian O’Shaunessy… who deserves his own postcode.
Fun and games in Channel 5’s latest instalment when a plucky little bloke squared up to Ian and told him he’d punch him through the window. An ill-advised threat he wisely didn’t carry out. Towering over mini-Mr Punch to a comical extent, Ian managed not to laugh.
It’s these explosive confrontations that make Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away so bleakly compelling. In a depressing car-crash sort of way.
No one’s standing up for deliberate debtors and habitual rent dodgers. But many of the distressed and the dispossessed on this shamelessly exploitative show are genuinely sad cases who shouldn’t really be served up as TV entertainment. But they are… and it’s undeniably good telly.
Droning on about their deep sympathy for the children they’re all set to make homeless, I’m sure the burly agents mean every word. But there’s a certain relish with which they carry out their duties. It looks suspiciously like they’re on a power trip… and loving every moment.
There are 2 Comments
Commission
They appear to be fluffy and cuddly until you consider that they are paid commission on each debt collected. So they have an incentive to drag as much out of a person and any friend they might have, as possible, regardless of how that may compound their financial difficulties.
Some are simply people who don't want to pay people but other debtors are real sad cases who have nothing and so the bailiffs aren't as deeply understanding as they would like us to believe.
Wendy Woo: Can't say why people like Can't Pay...
by Wendy Woo
Now I love a good reality show as much as the next girl even if I do veer towards the more altruistic end like Super Vet and Paul O'Grady at Battersea Dogs Home. Although in fairness I've wasted light years watching America's Next Top Model. Still, I simply can't understand people's fascination with 'Can't Pay? We'll Take It Away!' [Channel 5].
Roll up, roll up, watch really poor people lose everything and end up on the streets. My husband swears only the feckless and the fraudulent suffer but the few times I've glimpsed an episode they all seem to be poor saps who have paid their rent to some slick conman who then hasn't passed it on to the genuine landlord.
They usually get about half an hour to get all their worldly possessions out and looking at their sad bundles of stuff scattered on the roadside who needed half an hour? As for the phoney concern of the bailiffs --sorry, High Court Enforcement Agents-- yeah right! Only if the camera's on them.
So what's the hook? Maybe we all feel better about life watching people worse off than ourselves. After all, we still have a TV to watch--right folks? However, beware. If you enjoy watching 'Can't Pay? We'll Take It Away!' you're just one step away from 'Embarrassing Bodies'. You've been warned!