TV seems to have come full circle of late. The cost of a TV license keeps rising so now the BBC in their infinite wisdom have decided to give us a four-part documentary on a chain of family run pound shops.
Pound Shop Wars follows the efforts of Poundworld and it's CEO Chris Edwards as they face all the ups and downs that threaten to sink them each and every week.
This week Chris is to do battle with Poundworld's main rivals Poundland, who have recently cut all their prices down to 97p. A sentence that begs the question, where will it all end?
Presumably this series of Pound Shop Wars will play out like a cold war in reverse. With products getting cheaper and cheaper until one CEO eventually snaps, selling his own clothes for a penny an item in a scheme that'll forever be remembered as Mutually Assured Destitution.
It's fashionable to take the mickey out of pound shops but really, any businessman that can turn a profit on a pack of dusters sold for a quid is proving his worth, slave labour or not.
The trailer opens with that time-honoured nugget of pound shop humour: "How much is this?". Chris claims it's what he gets asked most, but whether that is a shocking indictment of Chris's sense of humour or the state school system remains to be seen.
In all fairness Pound Shop Wars looks like a lot of fun. Watching the assembled hordes of bargain hunters fighting over a £1 umbrella that'll probably dissolve in the rain used to be something I had to leave the house to enjoy.
Alas, those lovely folks at the BBC have cut out the middle man and put it on TV instead.
Personally, I'll be fielding bets from friends and neighbours on how long it takes people watching to go from judgement to jealousy.
After all, a quid for a pack of batteries that'd cost you four times as much across the road? Forget watching it, I'm angling for a guest spot on next week's instalment.
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