For someone who professes to be a semi-professional TV critic, there are a bunch of shows that I’ve never watched but which I apparently should have. Twin Peaks is one – I didn’t get past the third episode since the whole thing was patently ridiculous nonsense – and Buffy the Vampire Slayer is another. I’ve never seen even a single episode of the latter show, leading the few people I know who are retarded enough to be fans of it to scream at me, “What? You must see it! It takes thirty episodes to get going but then...it’s brilliant.” What, two seasons, followed by another five? No blooming thanks matey. Maybe there’s something decent there but I just don’t have time for it any more, like I don’t have time to do lots of stuff I would’ve done in my youth – although I’d rather have had my eyes poked out with rusty nails than watch Buffy.

The reason this is on my mind is that Buffy creator Joss Whedon’s latest series started a few weeks back on Sub TV. Called Dollhouse (Sub, Wednesdays 22:00), the show stars beautiful-in-a-plastic-way Eliza Dushku, and it is terrible. Maybe it would’ve got good in its third season but thankfully the second season is its last. Unfortunately that still means there’s another twenty or so episodes to be broadcast here before it finishes. The premise of the show is rather intriguing. A company hires out people called ‘dolls’ to wealthy clients. The dolls have had their minds wiped clean and each week are reprogrammed with the memories, personalities and expertise of people relevant to their mission. This could be for a romantic liaison or criminal enterprises, or anything in-between. The lead character, however, is accidentally left with some semblance of these personalities, so she develops some kind of semi-cognisant self-awareness.

The show is like a cross between 1960s children’s puppet show Joe 90 (memory implantation) and 1970s children’s animation Mr Benn (lead character takes on new persona each week and is returned to the fancy dress shop at the end of each episode), just with an eminently foxy lead. The main problem with Dollhouse is that all the cast are either improbably gorgeous or complete twats that you want to punch in the face. There’s the nerdy far-fetched twat who performs the mind-wiping; minder ex-cop twat who keeps hiding round the corner in his van while Dushku’s on a mission and then predictably gets his cover blown; icy boss-type twat who speaks in an aloof secret-mission-operative style all the time; and that bloke from Battlestar Galactica who plays an attractive FBI twat determined to find out the truth about the dollhouse. Everyone else thinks it’s just a rumour but he’s got a hunch that it really exists and blah blah blah yaaaawn.

It’s total nonsense, which on its own isn’t necessarily a bad thing so long as the kernel of nonsense is surrounded by something entertaining or believable. Sadly, the show and everyone in it is so concerned with looking good that the viewer will find it hard to give a flying monkey’s bum whether they all live or are wiped off the face of the earth in a cataclysmic mass mind-wipe, and their brains replaced by Fazer Mignon eggs – which could be the premise for next week’s show as far as I know, although since I won’t be watching it, I’ll never find out.

NICK BARLOW