Help Me Anthea, I'm Infested
A 2007 BBC Three pest control show cut short.
Help Me Anthea, I'm Infested is a 2007 factual entertainment television show produced by RDF Television for BBC Three. It was presented by Anthea Turner and Mark Coltman, a professional pest control expert, who visited people whose houses had pest control problems, offering advice and helping to exterminate vermin.
- field
- Television
- genre
- Factual entertainment
- network
- BBC Three
- production_company
- RDF Television
- presenters
- Anthea Turner, Mark Coltman
- episodes_broadcast
- 3
- original_planned_episodes
- 6
Lore & Background
Help Me Anthea, I'm Infested was originally slated for six episodes, but the BBC cut the series short after the third episode was broadcast. According to an interview with Anthea Turner, only the first three episodes were planned to be on bug infestations, although she did not specify what later episodes would cover. Critical reactions were very negative: James Watson at the Daily Telegraph described it as being both boring and exhibiting 'grinding, excruciating pointlessness', while The Guardian's Nancy Banks-Smith described it as 'frightful'.
Reader's Guide
The show is notable primarily for its overwhelmingly negative critical reception and its early cancellation. Charlie Brooker thought Turner came across as 'a hard, judgemental piece of work who spends most of her time haranguing the human inhabitants for living in filth', and the resulting programme feels like 'a strange psychodrama in which the punters are caught between unfeeling vermin on one side, and an unfeeling former Blue Peter presenter on the other'. Jeremy Paxman used it as an example of the perceived low quality and lack of public value of BBC Three programmes in an interview with the BBC chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, on Newsnight along with My Man Boobs and Me, My Dog Is As Fat As Me, Freaky Eaters and Fat Men Can't Hunt. The novelist P.D. James listed it as one of the BBC's 'most embarrassing programmes'. Despite this, Rentokil Initial list the show as one of a small number of pest control-related television shows.
Did You Know?
- The show was produced by RDF Television for BBC Three.
- Only three of the originally planned six episodes were broadcast.
- Anthea Turner stated that only the first three episodes were planned to be on bug infestations.
- Rentokil Initial list the show as one of a small number of pest control-related television shows.
More in BBC Three original programming 1-24
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