God Save the BBC

BBC AMERICA SERVES UP HIT AFTER HIT

want my BBC! BBC America, that is. A British invasion has stormed U.S. television. If there is another season of The Office—the excruciatingly realistic and comic mockumcntary scries nominated for two Golden Globes—as good as the last two, those of us who have long had to keep our fondness for the older series Are You Being Served? and Father Ted on the Q.T. will be forced to come out of the closet. We will certainly be in good company. Whether it’s Changing Rooms (now in its 13th season) or What Not to Wear, the message of BBC America is clear: Abandon your closet, all ye who enter here. The real-life fashion czarinas who gleefully decree What Not to Wear are the snakehipped, ironing-board-skinny Trinity Woodall and her busty blonde partner-in-humiliation, Susannah Constantine. Together they transform victims into vixens with unadulterated high-school brutality that far exceeds simply scrapping one’s beaded Christmas sweaters. Watching through fanned fingers—jubblies stuffed into a too tight bra elicit a “Look, she’s got three sets of tits!”—viewers giggle nervously as the desperate cling and howl, “But 1 love my bolero!” or leopard print, or pom-pom. Too bloody bad. New to the channel this season is the crime drama State of Play, whose cast abounds with folks hopelessly in need of being told What Not to Wear—witness jowls, pores the size of golf balls, Botox-able wrinkles, and neck zits—yet somehow all this comes off as dead sexy. Long live the Empire.

ELISSA SCHAPPELL