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Since Educating Rita, Julie Walters has been one of my role models, and her performance in this as a woman who helps the man she loves get in synch with his feminine side is magnificent. I would never have believed her character in the hands of a lesser actress, but Walters pulls it off with gusto and panache. Adrian Pasdar gives his best performance to-date in the male lead.

The final of the second, third and fourth UK series were seen by 12.73, 14.99 and 11.43 million people. The show helped singer Peter Andre revive his career in 2004. However, it has come under fire: * The first complaint is that the show is trashy, consisting mainly of has-been celebrities trying to revive their careers. The UK Secretary of State for Culture, Tessa Jowell, was the most high-profile person to criticise the show. In an interview with the Financial Times during the second British series, she said, “If they weren’t mostly – save their blushes – has-been celebrities, there might be more interest […] I think that if we saw many more programming hours taken over by reality TV, I hope you’d begin to see a viewers’ revolt.”[1] * The second criticism of the show is that it pretends to be more wild than it actually is: Audiences are left with the impression that the celebrities are in the Australian Outback, far from any major settlement, whereas they are actually close to a luxury hotel and about 30 min drive to the Gold Coast, Queensland. Further, the camp site in which the celebrities stay appears to be open to the elements but is largely covered by sheets above the view of the cameras. In an episode of the British show, a celebrity had to swim in a swamp apparently infested with crocodiles – marksmen were shown ready to shoot the animals if they attacked. In actuality, the area where this is filmed does not have crocodiles because it is too far south.Controversy over voting arose during the sixth series of the show when Toby Anstis was eliminated. It was revealed that both he and EastEnders actor Dean Gaffney had polled the bottom two amount of votes and that viewers had to vote again to save their favourite of the two. However many fans argue that this was not made clear. In the following days, The Sun ran an article that revealed Anstis’ eviction had been the result of a mix-up which happened on the interactive “red button” vote – people normally use this to keep their favourites in the show, but it asked which one they wanted to vote out instead of in. When ITV bosses realised their mistake, they shut the service down, but Anstis’ eviction sparked fury amongst fans.