Dollhouse

I’ve never seen Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Not a single episode. Buffy fans are appalled by my negligence. "You MUST watch it!" they scream. "It takes about two seasons to get going, but then ... my God, it’s the best show ever made".

Two seasons to get going? That’s a commitment of 34 episodes before even its fans think it becomes worthwhile. And there’s a further five seasons after that. Given the fans’ sparkly-eyed evangelism, I don’t doubt for a moment that there’s something of worth there. But I’m not a young man any more. I’m greying. My bones ache. It’s too late for me to embark on a quest of that magnitude. Consequently, Buffy’s been consigned to the growing list of things I’ll never try, like bungee jumping and crystal meth.

Yet I have found time to sit through the first two episodes of Buffy creator Joss Whedon’s latest creation, Dollhouse (Tue, 9pm, Sci-Fi). And it’s bloody awful. Perhaps it’ll turn into a work of genius in its third season. I won’t know, because I’ll have either given up or died by then.

The premise is interesting: it’s about a young person who has their mind wiped each week and imprinted with the personalities, memories and expertise of a bunch of other people, before being sent on a mission. In other words, it’s like Joe 90, except you’re supposed to want to screw the lead character, because the lead character is the improbably gorgeous Eliza Dushku, not a nine-year-old schoolboy marionette.

In week one, Echo (that’s her name) was transformed into an expert in Latin American kidnap negotiations, which meant she donned glasses and wore her hair up in a bun. In week two, she’s an outdoor-sports-enthusiast-and-fuck-buddy, which means she gets to dress a bit like Lara Croft and have sex in a tent. Typing this out, I’ve realised it isn’t Joe 90 at all. It’s Mr Benn, except you’re supposed to want to screw the lead character, because the lead character is the improbably gorgeous Eliza Dushku, not a two-dimensional paper cutout of a middle-aged businessman.

It’s not just Quantum Leap week after week, mind. No. There’s a whole bunch of other characters walking around overseeing the "Dollhouse" which Echo gets returned to each week. For instance, there’s a black ex-cop who has to oversee her missions by hiding round the corner in a van and tediously getting his cover blown. There’s also an irritating nerd who performs the mind-wipe-and-brain-filling ceremonies - one of those implausible, punchable little tits who only exists in TV or movies. Apparently he’s a scientific genius, although he looks about 12 years old and everything he says has to pass through about 500 pop culture irony filters before it leaves his smackable wise-cracking mouth. The minute he first popped up on screen, I instinctively knew me and Dollhouse would never be friends, in the same way that finding a Scouting For Girls album on someone’s iPod would stop you wanting to have sex with them.

The improbably gorgeous Olivia Williams plays an icy boss-type woman who speaks in cool aloof "mission operative" military codespeak the whole fucking time, and Tahmoh Penikett from Battlestar Galactica shows up as Agent Jawbone Hunk, an improbably gorgeous FBI bloke determined to uncover the truth about this "Dollhouse" thing he’s heard about which his colleagues insist is just a wild rumour but he’s got this hunch there’s more to it than that and blah blah BLAH BLAH OH WHO CARES?

It’s just nonsense. And nonsense is fine when it consists of a small kernel of nonsense surrounded by something either plausible or interesting. Dollhouse has neither and, crucially, there’s too much emphasis on empty prettiness, from the set design to the faces of all involved. Everyone’s so improbably gorgeous you won’t give a shit whether they live or die. Unless, perhaps, you’ve had your mind wiped and replaced with the brain of an orange - probably the premise for next week’s episode, which I won’t tune in for. Someone let me know if this bullshit gets going somewhere round season three, yeah?