Helsinki Times

Stay away from my house

I was just sitting down to write this column about the latest Duudsonit when I said to myself, “Nick, this is so ten years ago!” And I was right. The Dudes are the Finnish spiritual heirs to the irredeemably childish and oft-pathetic Jackass, beloved of students and layabouts from 2000-2002. Also like Jackass, the Dudes have been trying to find a proper raison d’être ever since most people realised that making total pillocks of yourselves on TV is an idea with a severely limited lifespan – one which thankfully expired sometime in the mid-noughties. Never ones to mercifully euthanise a telly success, however, Sub TV have entered some kind of unholy alliance with the Duudsonit twits, apparently aimed at keeping them onscreen for the foreseeable future or until the extinction of the human race, whichever comes sooner.

Their latest wheeze is Duudsonit tuli taloon (which translates rather curiously as “The Dudesons Came to the House”) – a weird reality type show which sees the Dudes invade normal Finnish homes with the aim of…well, I’m not really sure what the aim is beyond making a mess and annoying the parents by acting like 5-year-olds. There used to be only two Dudes but now there’re four of them. They all troop up to a house and proceed to spend a few days with the family, larking about a bit. The kids in the families are, perhaps unsurprisingly, the ones who get on best with the adults-behaving-like-children that are the show’s hosts. Their indoor golf antics are hilarious if you’re under 15 but anyone older might feel a severe sense of déja vu – didn’t Steve-O do something similar once in 2001?

Admittedly, very occasionally they do something genuinely amusing. In the last episode they distracted a guard dog by serving it some Finnish näkki, a surprising highlight of the show which occurred in the fourth minute. The rest of it consisted of some admittedly photogenic children farting around with some nominal ‘adults’. It’s all idiocy though; at the end of their stay they always leave some nice gifts for the family, the old softies.

I’m entirely unsure as to who the audience for this show is supposed to be. If it’s children, as seems logical, then it’s not being shown at the right time. Four p.m. would be more appropriate than nine o’clock, surely? The only other people who might be interested are idiots and drunkards, and to be honest there are plenty of shows on that cater for those audience groups, especially on Sub.

When the most exciting thing that happens in an hour is some foam machine gets out of control, leading to a minor falling out with the matriarch followed by the inevitable making-up, it’s not a good sign. Positively speaking, however, everyone ultimately has a good time, and the editing of the show is actually some of the best I’ve ever seen in Finland. This is noteworthy because Finnish TV editing is notoriously rubbish, so to have a show that is actually filmed professionally is something of a novelty. In all other respects, though, Duudsonit tuli taloon is occasionally entertaining but ultimately pointless.

Nick Barlow
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The writer knows the art of channel surfing.

Photo: JAAKKO KUIVAMÄKI