Handcuffed: The Last Pair of Standing Review – an insult to all involved, not least Jonathan Ross | television

AFollowing his brilliant Machiavellian performance in The Celebrity Traitors, Jonathan Ross is set to appear on our screens again soon. He celebrated his big post-Traitors party, hosting Channel 4’s new six-part ‘social experiment’. Ross explains that this series is about whether “Britain is divided or not.” [can] ‘Settle their differences’, by handcuffing two strangers from different walks of life together for 24 hours a day (including in the shower – ouch!) and seeing who can last the longest for a £100,000 prize. However, it’s a show that plays off these differences for the sake of perspective – a cheap throwback to Wife Swap at best and The Jeremy Kyle Show at worst.

Each pair has been clearly chosen to maximize mutual discomfort. Joe is the owner of a plus-size fashion brand, and Robin believes that fat people are lazy; Tilly spends her free time helping the homeless while millionaire Anthony thinks he’s an expert because he’s been camping before; George is a former prison officer who believes that learning is the best way to empower himself while Sir Ben is an aristocrat who – despite having an expensive education – still chooses to own a painting of Adolf Hitler.

After they’re introduced to each other onstage in bizarre Blind Date-style segments, the handcuffs are slapped on, only to be removed — or rather extended with a chain, as Ross explains — if they need to do “number two.” How humiliating for everyone involved, not least Wusi.

Over the four episodes released for review, Ross isn’t given much to do – he’s a disembodied voice, introducing Handcuffed’s victims with platitudes like “janitor who can’t stop swearing” (Tilly) and “alpha male” (Robin). Not that they aren’t judging each other already – one cuffed man looked at his colleague and declared: “I knew he was a vegetarian.” The show’s makers are clearly looking to create drama – hence the 2000s scene in which George is taken around Sir Ben’s countryside pile and shown, among other things, a painting of Hitler, statues that appear to depict enslaved Africans and pet dogs named after Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Kwasi Kwarteng.

It might be a bit of a shock if Sir Ben (full name Benjamin Slade) wasn’t a self-described self-promoter on Instagram who issued a memorable call for a wife last year, excluding “guardian readers, Scorpios, drug users, alcoholics, Scots, under 5’6”, people from countries starting with ‘I’ who have green in their flag and people from countries where they don’t wear coats. (Bonus points too for anyone playing Toff Bingo on TV who saw Francis Fulford from The F***ing Fulfords around Sir Ben’s dinner table.) Sure, if you were looking to make a show about ‘resolving differences’, you wouldn’t choose someone intolerant – but then was that really the point here? Once George declares “You’re of the upper classes, you know it won’t be long before one of them – or both – smashes that security glass for the key that unlocks their handcuffs.

Maybe, deep down, there was an idea for a TV show that wasn’t quite as bad, but rather had more respect for its participants. ((the curse!exclaims Robin immediately upon meeting Joe, who is, thankfully, wearing ear protectors. “Training is out the window, lifestyle is out the window, healthy habits are out the window… yurugh!”) But you get the sense that Handcuffed has been designed to be a terrible experience, like a dramatized version of the Daily Mail’s comments section. Where, once upon a time, Channel 4’s exciting tasks might have seemed enough to justify broadcasting appalling opinions of the terrible. People, we’re at a point in time where it just doesn’t seem enough to point and talk about, and certainly not to highlight. More racism and classism This reminds me of another apparently revolutionary Channel 4 ‘social experiment’, ‘Go Back Where You Came From’, from last year, in which a group of people with ‘strong views’ on immigration were taken to Syria and Somalia – half to keep the locals out, the other half to be angry that people in their group were doing this.

There is, at times, a sense that some of the participants have listened to each other long enough to get something going, and that all the screaming and eye rolling may not have been entirely in vain. But mostly, Handcuffed is a rude show at a time when we deserve better. So, it’s not so much Machiavellian as just bad.