TV One stumbled on to a ratings winner with the strangely captivating Barbie-on-acid dramas of Big Fat Gypsy Weddings.
Despite the misleading title (it mostly featured Irish Travellers, not Roma Gypsies) and selective depiction of Traveller culture, it provided a rare look at an insular outsider people struggling to find their place in the modern world - though it never asked how they pay for such lavish celebrations. Maybe it's because they save money on rates, maintenance and all the other costs faced by homeowners.
The show found some Travellers who were willing to talk about their lives, but also an outsider who had ingratiated herself with them: Dressmaker Thelma Madine, creator of fantastical, kitschy wedding gowns that involve more planning and effort than the Moon landings.
A straight-talking, weary-looking Liverpudlian, Thelma's the lady to see if you want a hot pink dress with enough fabric to clothe an African village, a truckload of crystals, and your name in fairy lights. And another dozen just like it, for the bridesmaids. Just be sure to hire a limo with extra-wide doors.
Now she's got her own show, where she's training 10 gypsy girls as dressmakers, as a way of giving back to the people who've paid for her palatial home (furnished in the same garish style as her dresses) and private schooling for her daughter. At first glance, it looks like a commendable idea.
Big Fat Gypsy Weddings painted a depressing picture of the role of females in Traveller culture. It's a contradictory world where little girls bump and grind in skimpy costumes like miniature Beyonce clones, and teenagers dress like Arkansas jailbait but their honour is vigorously defended until they're married. After that, it's the life of a stay-at-home mother (which must be pretty claustrophobic when your home is a caravan).
Many Traveller girls aren't expected to get an education, much less a job, but the big question is whether they live this way by choice or because they are oppressed victims of a male-dominated culture. Thelma is convinced it's the latter - hence her new venture - but she doesn't seem to be entirely on their side.
While she's done well from Travellers, she shares society's doubts about their integrity, intelligence and work ethic, and considers the girls to be essentially unemployable, were she not coming to their rescue.
Announcing the project to her staff, she said: "The bad part is they're all gonna be Travellers." That's not bad, she was told. "You come back to me and say that in three months," Thelma replied grimly, as if casting a gypsy curse, followed by a blithe quip about how one girl won't need her dad's permission because he's just gone to jail.
Like its predecessor, Thelma's Gypsy Girls purports to be sympathetic to its subject but looks more like a typical "reality" show, cranking up the conflict (which is easy when you put teenage girls in a room together). It feels like exploitation in more than one sense - Thelma's snowed under with work and has moved to new premises, and the expansion rather conveniently coincides with her getting a bunch of low-paid trainees.
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