Labor of Love: The most fun, trashiest of trashy summer TV

In the TV racket, summer started last week.

We know this because Dwayne Johnson has been all over the place in shouty commercials announcing the return of something called The Titan Games. And on another channel, people playing competitive tag has been promoted. Yep, people playing tag on TV for money and fame. Also, as another commercial keeps telling us loudly, Sofia Vergara from Modern Family now joins Simon Cowell, Howie Mandel and Heidi Klum as a celebrity judge for the 15th season of America’s Got Talent.

This is all very well and it is precisely what got American network TV where it is today. You can safely ignore the shows mentioned so far. Because the summer’s hottest, trashiest, most tawdry show is about a woman named Kristy, age 41, choosing a chap to impregnate her. Ah yes, that old concept.

Labor of Love (Thursdays, Fox, City TV, 8 p.m.) has been dismissed as stupid. You can see why, since it features many stupid men who could represent their home countries if “stupidity” was an Olympic sport. Regrettably, it isn’t. Reality TV dating shows are actually the Olympics of boneheaded behaviour.

On your behalf, I watched Labor of Love last week. It unfolds in the usual way, for a while. We are introduced to Kristy by host Kristin Davis, who used to play Charlotte on Sex and the City. Kristin explains that Kristy was briefly married, hoped to be a mother to at least one child, but the marriage ended. It’s not explain how or why. We just see a photo of Kristy looking sad.

In any case, Kristin says that Kristy’s plan is “to skip the dating and go straight to baby-making.” This will involve the arrival of 15 hunky fellas and from among them Kristy will chose the father of her child.

Then the guys arrive. Not one of them knows how to dress for the occasion. Most chose a suit, shirt, sweater or pants that are obviously a size too small. Perhaps it was the excitement about the possibility of impregnating Kristy that made them giddy and distracted. You know what men are like. So they meet and josh, drink beer or cocktails and briefly meet Kristy. Then, and I kid you not, they are instructed to ejaculate. Yes, they are directed to nearby trailers where they must provide a sample of their sperm for testing. They do as they are told.

While awaiting the results, they continue the party. One guy gets wasted. So wasted that he’s slurring his words and unsteady on his feet. You know what men are like. It turns out that the guy with the totally top baby-making sperm is a tall, chiselled fella from South Africa. Other guys call him “the South African god.” Well, a god he might be, but he isn’t much in the brains department. He forgets Kristy’s name. No, seriously he does. Can’t remember that it’s Kristy, nor Cindy or Cathy or Katy or such.

After some more “interactions” (yes “interaction” is a big word on Labor of Love) Kristy and Kristin get together in private and decide to divide the male hunks into groups of “maybe” or “ why not?” or “no way.” In the end, only one guy is eliminated. The guy who got roaring drunk and the guy who forgot Kristy’s name are kept around.

Labor of Love is unspeakably tacky. Yet it has a purpose. By all means condemn Kristy for the unbecoming – nay, mortifying – act of doing a reality TV dating show to chose a guy to impregnate her. But the true objective of the series is to mock and deride the men lining up to father Kristy’s child. Boneheads, the lot of them. The series will continue for weeks to come. Enjoy.

Finally, this column continues with a “stay-at-home-period daily-streaming pick.” Today’s pick is Temple Grandin (Crave). This 2010 HBO biopic is entrancing for two reasons: an astonishing performance from Claire Danes; and the central figure she plays is utterly compelling. Danes is almost unrecognizable as Grandin, a woman born with severe autism who eventually went through high school and university and became one of the world’s leading authorities on animal behaviour. Specifically, livestock behaviour and the design of facilities for humane slaughter. Eventually, her work transformed the design of both cattle ranches and slaughterhouses. The real Grandin is much celebrated; a BBC documentary about her was called The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow and in that program, she said, “My theory is that there are similarities between my autistic mind and animal thinking.” Here it’s more about feelings than theories, but it’s very, very good.

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