Bring Back Borstal review: naughty boys make good TV, but this is a feeble ‘experiment’

‘In a unique experiment …” Bring Back Borstal (ITV) is one of those shows that starts like that. The unique experiment is to bus a bunch of scallies and gobshites back to the 1930s, bang them up in Borstal to see if today’s troublemakers can handle – and benefit from – the regime of the past.

So Jack, Michael, Harry, Casey, Scott etc – correction (correction!): Burniston, Proctor, Rule, Spence, Valero etc, because there were no first names in the 1930s – are packed off to a castle in Northumberland for a four-week stretch. Between them they have a list of convictions as long as their collective heavily tatted arms – ABH, GBH, GHB, class As, class Bs, Es and whizz, Ds and further Es for effort. But there’s none of that here, or PlayStation, or Sky Sports. Borstal was – is – about physical exercise, discipline and hard work.

Which did work, back in the day. Seventy per cent of the young men who went through Borstal never went back to prison again, says David Wilson, normally a criminologist and professor at Birmingham City Uni, now playing the part of prison governor. Compare that to this lot, who are in and out like Nigel Kennedy’s right elbow.

It works today too, as television. They are entertaining, likable naughty boys, and naughty boys work well on television. It’s amusing to watch them being capsized out of bed about eight hours before they’re used to getting up, being yelled at by sergeant majorly types, made to run and do sport and chop wood. Kind of Brat Camp meets The 1900 House, with that kind of Early 2000s Television Programme feel about it too.

As unique experiment though? Pah! The most obvious flaw, of course, is that they’re not actually doing time. They are there not because they have to be, but because they’ve chosen to be, for a bit of a laugh, and to be on TV. And if they don’t like it, well they can check out any time they like, and leave. Which they do, three in week one. “I can’t wait to get back to my cannabis,” says Rule, who can’t take them, the rules. “Three cheers for cannabis.”

Also, even for the ones who stick it, it really doesn’t look so bad, does it? Or very much like a detention centre. No bars, key jangling, metallic banging. They have brought in old-fashioned iron beds, but the mattresses look very comfy. When the older Kearney brother is put into isolation the bed goes, but he gets to keep the mattress. So his punishment, for losing his rag and throwing chairs about, is to get his own tastefully decorated room (the whole place is lovely), in a splendid country pile. More like Bring Back Residential Activity Holidays At Country Hotels then, or something snappier.

More banged-up youths in Crims (BBC3), though fictional, and comedic. Luke (Elis James, kind of a young Rob Brydon) finds himself inside, along with Jason (Kadiff Kirwan) who is Luke’s girlfriend’s brother as well as the reason for their incarceration, on account of his ineptness as a Crim.

Sort of Porridge, for the young. Ready Brek? Rude Ready Brek, because it’s mainly about drawing up wanking rotas, trying not to get bummed to death etc. Puerile and silly then. And – if you’re basically a child like me – hilarious. I think Crims will nicely fill the slot left vacant by Plebs, People Just Do Nothing, Phone Shop, The Inbetweeners etc.

Also a good place for an old giffer like me to pick up new words and phrases – 3G for example. Something to do with old mobile phones, you think? Ha! G does stand for generation, but I’ll let Jason explain: “3G – when you shag a girl, her mum and her gran.” Oh.

Well, that’s nothing compared to Sex Party Secrets (Channel 4) where literally everyone shags literally everyone. Like Jon here who organises sex parties in another lovely country house (Dorset this time, Northumberland is too cold for orgies). Loads of people, all shagging each other, all over the place. Oh my effing G, it’s making me feel quite queasy. I worry about stains and the furniture, also that I must be extremely boring.

Jon used to be boring – happily married, kids, “a dad going to B&Q at the weekends, that was it.” That’s it for me, exactly what I do! It’s fine, no, I like going to B&Q at the weekends. Actual B&Q, because it probably now means something else, like 3D does. DIY maybe, like Jason’s rota, or Nigel’s elbow. Don’t just do it, B&Q it … Enough!