I tried, I really did. Hand on heart, I was prepared to put the horrors of 2009 behind me and start afresh, my eyes open to the possibilities that a new year brings. Unfortunately, one of the first programmes I saw after January 1st was Make Up! on YLE (Saturdays at 21:30), which has put me in the most god-awful mood for the rest of the year, and makes it hard even now to see the letters E, L and Y without bringing up a little bit of bile.

You see, Make Up! was heavily trailered over the festive season, presented as some kind of brilliant new concept in televisual entertainment. ‘It’ll be fun!’ said YLE, but it wasn’t; it was a pile of steaming rubbish. At this point I should admit that, since the show is supposedly aimed at women, I do not belong to the target demographic. However, in order to head off any protests concerning my suitability to review it, I watched it with my mum, who IS a woman, and she left the room in a huff after twenty minutes saying, “I can’t watch this! It’s rubbish and infantile.” I could only agree, but at least I did watch it until the end. Not only that, I asked my mate’s girlfriend to watch it too, and she turned it off half way through, with accompanying snorts of derision. “It’s crap!” she said. Plus ça change.

Presented by three men, Make Up! comes across as some kind of light entertainment/variety show. Filmed live at the Apollo Theatre in Helsinki, YLE call this a ‘multi-sexual comedy show’. To which I can only ask, what the hell does multi-sexual mean? Maybe they’ve discovered more sexes than just male and female, I dunno. Plus it’s also not at all amusing, which rather makes the ‘comedy’ tag meaningless. Presented by three blokes, Nicke, Jani and Lari, the thirty minutes of hell involved them taking off some clothes, slapping each other’s arses, tweaking each other’s nipples, and generally behaving like retarded twelve-year olds. They aren’t funny, they’re not witty, and, according to my mum, they’re not sexy either, so what’s the point? They also give a bad impression of men by being completely obsessed with boobs, particularly manipulating them like bread dough. And this show is ‘aimed at women’! Unbelievable.

YLE’s own press bumpf says the show “is not a feminist programme, but is a show where women are the centre of attention. It’s planned for women, but the humour and contents will also appeal to men.” Well, it definitely isn’t a feminist show, that much is true, because a) the stars of the show are men, and b) the producers clearly think Finnish women are dazed simpletons who are happy to put up with any old nonsense that’s thrown at them. I also suspect the chances of any men being interested in this are approximately zero per cent, simply because the show makes them look like total dicks. Whoever thought of this train wreck should be sacked.

The fact is that YLE has a good track record of making news and factual shows, and an absolutely terrible one of making things like this. There is nothing good to be said about it. It’s vacuous, insulting, sexist television. And soon everyone in Finland will have to pay nearly two hundred euros a year to finance it. Talk about rubbing our faces in it. For the sake of all that is good and holy, do not watch this show.

Nick Barlow