Have you ever had it when you’ve not really had enough sleep and you’re absolutely starving? You balloon around feeling a bit dizzy and slightly hysterical. Well, if anything, that’s what watching Dog Borstal made me feel like. I think BBC3′s show might just be the oddest thing on the box.
The basics of the show is simple, and not odd at all. Three dog experts train naughty hounds to behave themselves in public… but it doesn’t end there…
The three experts of the show (their names don’t really matter do they?) give orders to the owners of the mischievous mutts to stop them from attacking everything that moves. Like grass blowing in the wind. Or a child’s arm. They show the owners how to restrain a dog properly… they teach them how to talk to a dog with authority… and it all leads up to a test at the end with a guy who knows a lot about canines. All pretty straightforward so far. However, it’s not the basics of the show that are odd. The gloss on top on the show makes for puzzling and disorientated brains.
The way the show is soundtracked is the biggest puzzler. I could tell you which songs were used in the show, but you wouldn’t intrinsically understand why the show is weird. Instead, I’ll use an analogy. Take ‘Bad Lad’s Army’ from ITV. A bunch of hard nosed colonels sticking metal buckets on bad lad’s head and hitting them with a air raid siren (switched on). You gasp at the no-nonesense attitude of the staff… then feel slightly sickly as the whole thing is suddenly soundtracked by ‘Beauty and the Beast’ by Celine Dion and Paebo Bryson. Subconsciously, you’re mind starts to tell you that, should this way of editing a show become popular, then it’s only a matter of time before we see the bloody war segments of the news soundtracked by Wham Rap.
Another weird aspect of the show is how the dogs are kept in kennels on an army base with their owners living in tents on what seems to be an airstrip. Imagine Guantanamo Bay for pooches. So you see these poor owners in 1940′s canvas tents getting rained on… again with the odd choices of soundtrack. In one case, I think I saw someone drunk – alone – in a tent shot through nightvision cameras with ‘You Make Me Feel Like Dancing’ by Leo Sayer. From ‘Full Metal Jacket’ to ‘Blair Witch Goes Disco’ in the bat of a confused eyelid.
Then, to compound your disillusioned brain, the tests given to the dogs are a lesson in Dali like surrealism. The owners have to walk their dogs around on a huge field, whilst other people stand with motionless dogs about 10 meters away. It honestly looks like something from Gilbert and George. To sum up, this is (sneakily) the most potty show on the box by a mile… and I think I love it.[Mof Gimmers]
Join TVScoop on Facebook for exclusive competitions and gossip
