I’m finding E4’s advertising campaign for their new crop of reality shows a little odd. The line-up includes ‘Beauty and the Geek’ where ‘hot’ women transform nerdy men into studs (Mondays 10pm), the Paris Hilton/ Nicole Richie nonsense that is ‘The Simple Life’ (also Mondays, 11pm) along with tomorrow night’s premiere of ‘Age of Love’ where women in their 20s battle those in their 40s for the affections of Aussie tennis star Mark Philippoussis (pictured right.) The promotions bill the shows as ‘no brainers’ with two perma-tanned and cheesy presenters talking about switching your brain off and indulging in trashy TV, and though I’m sure no grey matter is required to view any of the three programmes, it seems to insult and undermine its target audience.

I know that E4 have performed well with their tongue-in-cheek campaigns, but by telling viewers that only stupid people would watch such fare seems more of a deterrent than an honest and appealing invitation. No-one, however dense, wants to be called stupid and with little warmth shown for the shows it neglects the cheeky brashness of former E4 successes. If the adverts conceded that we have brains but sometimes might like a little silly distraction, that would be much better, but instead they effectively condemn their own products.

And with that said – tomorrow night E4 debuts their top acquisition for village idiots, ‘Age of Love’ a show that asks if love is truly timeless with a hairy tennis player the supposed prize for some lucky lady. With this absorption of nasty American reality shows, does E4 want to be the new E! Channel?