World of Chig   

22.11.07
The TV appearance that never was

Starting on BBC Two tonight at 20:00 is a series called Arrange Me A Marriage. The regular reader (that's probably you) may remember that, back on 17 April this year, I asked here if anyone had watched the pilot. I also mentioned that I'd been "having an in-depth conversation with a television production company".

Four days later, on 21 April, I wrote this:

"Chig is away on location, filming with the BBC on a hush-hush TV project. (I'm making it sound more exotic than it really is, but it's absolutely true. If it goes any further, believe me you'll hear about it.)"

It can now be revealed that the programme we were filming was in fact Arrange Me A Marriage. It wasn't for my benefit though. (Maybe next series?!) It was my sister who had made it down to the last handful of subjects for the programme, in which an Asian marriage arranger, Aneela Rahman, uses friends, family and existing social networks in order to arrange a few dates and a possible relationship, to see if the arranged methods are any more successful than the random ways we often use to make these decisions in our real lives. That's the idea anyway.

A producer and a camerawoman from the production company came to my Mum's house on that lovely sunny day in April and filmed us at the kitchen table talking about my sister and her relationships. They also travelled quite a distance to other locations to film other friends and relatives. It was a strange experience, but it seemed to work quite well and we had a few ideas for what to do when the filming started on the real thing. However, the production company at that point was doing pre-filming with a few possible subjects, before showing the results to the BBC for them to decide which ones to proceed with for the series. We were optimistic, but in the end it came to a choice between my sister and someone else for the last slot and they went for someone else. An opportunity missed, for all of us. And you, dear reader, have been denied the opportunity of seeing my fizzog in horrible detail on your plasma screens and hearing my sinusitis-riddled mumblings about someone you don't even know.

Obviously I'd be interested to see how the series turned out without us when it starts tonight, but sadly it clashes with I'm A Celebrity. C'est la vie.

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