BBC’s 'Make me a Dealer'

Reality television’s great. A little screen full of millions of tiny attention seeking people for you to pity and ridicule. 

So today I watched BBC’s Make me a Dealer. Calm down, it’s not about junkies teaching overly keen individuals their dirty junkie selling ways in a bus interchange on a Friday night although that would also make for a pleasant evening viewing experience.

According to the BBC, Make me a Dealer is about a man called Paul Martin, who “takes to the road as he searches the length and breadth of Britain in pursuit of a new generation of moneymaking antiques dealers”. Sounds like a snooty, boring sort of James Bond thing.

Apparently this quaint British show helps regular normals become overnight antiques sensations - experts at determining trash from not-trash - with the aim of making some cash via a little side hustle. 

Hmm…it seems to me the whole thing about knowing trash from not-trash is having extensive knowledge of your market. Like having a degree in knowing trash from non-trash.

Like having a degree if you were a doctor, for example, as an example that's not really the same at all. Let’s have a medical show like this, where they release members of the public onto other somewhat sick members of the public, and they try to treat them using Dr Google, under the watchful yet mocking gaze of medical professionals. That’s sounds fun and watchable, BBC.

Alas, probably not in their upcoming pilots sadly, so you’ll all have to play Dr Google to diagnose yourself, your neighbours, your friends, strangers and your long-suffering work colleagues without getting reality television famous. Probably for the best.

Anyway anyway anyway, the point is, if you want to be an antiques pro-fesh-i-narl, you kind of have to do a lot of groundwork to know what the goshdarnit you are doing with all those period pieces of great antiquity.

So, anyway anyway, in our show our hero Paul Martin does that elitist voiceover thing of mocking and humiliating David and Laura - tonight’s contestants - because he thinks they don’t know what they are doing. Well, David has a vague idea; Laura not so much. 

Fortunately, Laura has been humiliated before and knows exactly what’s she’s doing in that regard and she is having none of it, maintaining her sense of humour with such nuggets as “I’m going to buy a mug, not be a mug”. Yeah Paul Martin, save your toff scoffing and contemptuous ridicule for another day, mate. How very British is this show?

So lots of things happened and ad breaks blah blah and then more things and then they had to go to an auction and they keep putting their hands in the air. No, don’t put your hands in the air unless you have money to buy this useless crap. 

And then, in the end - let’s fast forward at the fastest speed possible to the end - Paul Martin comes out with, “well, I think they both got lucky”,  presumably because they made some type of profit off the stained mid 18th century mug and ugly decorative art that they bought at auction (I wasn't paying attention really). Yeah? Fancy that, Paul Martin. Turns out guessing the value of cor blimey ye old shite ain’t that hard after all.

Anyway, I’m VERY ANNOYED, because I quite liked this show.