Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

Here's a lesson in TV chemistry for you. Imagine you had a makeover show that only focused on an outrageously camp man, screeching and squealing out single innuendoes and feeling up the guests for an hour.

It would be a hell that even Graham Norton would blanche at. Equally bad would be a programme that featured, oh, let's say, four suavely gay men with monotone voices who could bore for Manhattan. You'd doze off before the end of the opening credits. So what do you do? How about sticking them together...

That's how the original US Queer Eye for the Straight Guy works. On his own, Kenneth Williams lookalike and fashion guru Carson Kressley would have viewers reaching for earplugs and/or something heavy, sharp or explosive to heave at the TV screen.

However, mix him in with Kyan, Ted, Jai and Thom (the show's experts on silly names and, respectively, grooming, food, culture and interior design), and he suddenly becomes a bright oasis of bitchiness in the desert of their nice, friendly but paint-dryingly-dull TV personas.

Apparently, producers who get this kind of thing right are looked on as geniuses in the world of TV. It may not seem like rocket science to outsiders (and what's so complex about rocket science, anyway?

Mix two liquids together and light a match. Big deal), but just take a look at the lamentable UK version or any of the other bandwagon-jumping, gay Xeroxes like Fairy Godfathers to see how easy it is to get it wrong.

Making its debut on terrestrial TV, Queer Eye feels like a long-running series from its sleek and simple first episode. The fab five get in a mini van, head over to the house of a style-free dork and proceed to turn him into a well-dressed, beautifully groomed modern man with a great flat and the social skills of a minor European royal.

Tonight's lucky victim is Brian "Butch" Schepal, a carpenter and artist, who lives in what can be politely described as ... heck, it can't be politely described as anything.

This man's flat is a disaster area of scattered clothes, magazine heaps and dusty gym equipment. Can the boys trim his long, straggly hair (he hasn't had it cut for nine years), revamp his home and update his looks in time for the opening of a display of his artwork at a swanky New York gallery?

It's not going to be easy. Looking at Brian's closet, Carson groans: "Did you alphabetise your clothes by ugly, uglier and uglier?"