Touted as provocative, important and hard-hitting was British documentary Benefits Street on TV One (Wednesday at 8.35pm).
You need to feel a black dog snapping at your heels and have your spirits plummeting as you wonder why you've sat down to watch this reality doco, described as poverty porn about the residents of James Turner St in Birmingham. Just 5 per cent of residents in this long, dismal street have work, while the rest deviate between benefit fraud, cannabis cultivation, shoplifting and other anti-social activities.
This doco follows the lives of several residents and they all pepper their conversation with the f ... word. They are mostly bored, downcast, see no future but somehow manage to cling to tiny glimmers of hope, like if they are evicted from their slummy flat they can stay on for a year because it would take that long for the landlord to drag them through the courts.
Though this documentary is another example of prime gritty, edgy British doco making, I don't think it's about whether one has a social conscience or not. It's more about how ugly you fancy your viewing. And following Benefits Street on Wednesday night was another illuminating Brit programme, Mummy's Little Murderer, about Elliot Turner who strangled his New Zealand girlfriend Emily Longley ... uplifting telly at its best!
But it's all on a need to know basis.
Over to you whether you need to feel a little smug about your own situation, you want to cast aspersions on the low life in society, or you just end up sinking lower and lower into your sofa as yet again you're confronted by grim, not-to-be-missed reality telly, which is frankly an hour of unadulterated misery.
These residents, all benefit claimants living on the poverty line, smoke too much, eat too little (or all the wrong stuff), take drugs, are pasty or pimply faced, lank-haired and mostly too fat or painfully thin. And the benefits cuts go on because we have these bludgers, criminals, and socially inept people all lacking motivation to find employment.
But luckily, at the end of this long street is the Winson Green Prison, conveniently right in the hood and on the doorstep - just in case?
Fortunately, I had watched My Kitchen Rules - the New Zealand version - beforehand. It featured the Bogan Besties from Tauranga, Steph Usmar and June Lyall.
These two 40-something women had started their medieval feast with a hiss and a roar ... meaty lamb shanks, mashed spuds, and vege, a tomato and red pepper soup, and for dessert apple and cinnamon pie with homemade macadamia nut icecream.
But sadly, this personable duo fell about the kitchen suffering moments of serious stress that left them wilting and hysterical.
Their guests ran the gauntlet of outright bitchy to deep sighs of sympathy.
They are bottom of the scoring. I don't like their chances of coming back but their go-get'em attitude made me laugh out loud - a relief before the gloom hit.