Review – The Boss Is Coming To Dinner

The Boss Is Coming To Dinner – Nine – 8:30pm Wednesday – AUS

The Boss Is Coming To Dinner is Channel 9’s latest reality misfire which finds three candidates competing for the one job by inviting their prospective boss round to dinner. After the intro of the show gave us the set up I turned to my girlfriend and asked “is this a terrible premise for a show?” Her reply was a simple “yes”.  Then she walked off to do something far more rewarding than watching The Boss Is Coming To Dinner, like stare into space or recite the letters of the alphabet or check to see whether the toaster is operating at a reasonable temperature.

The Boss Is Coming To Dinner promises all of the glamour of a job interview combined with all of the fun of cooking a meal for somebody you don’t know. But that’s not even the whole show. The premise sounds like the boss is invited around to dinner and hijinks ensue, but the actual show should be titled The Boss Is Coming To Dinner Then The Boss Is Setting An Arbitrary Task That Has Nothing To Do With Dinner Then You’re Going To Go To The Boss’s Place For Dinner. As each candidate tries to impress the boss at the dinner, and then during the task, and then at the other dinner questions start to swirl around in my mind.

First and foremost there’s one question which keeps coming back to me: why is this on television? Where’s the fun? Why does Channel 9 expect people to watch this show? I’m unsure as to what the show actually is about. I know what the show isn’t. The show ISN’T about cooking, as the meals are barely mentioned. The show ISN’T about the awkwardness of having a potential employer around to your house, because we see almost nothing of the candidates prepping their places before the boss arrives. The show ISN’T about the embarrassing lengths people will go for a job. The show ISN’T about the cutthroat drama filled world of business ala The Apprentice.

It appears that the show IS an hour long job interview and is just as shitty to sit through as a real job interview. “What are your strengths?” “Why do you want to work for this company? “ “She shows real drive.” “She has a lot of experience.” These are real bosses, real potential employees and the only prize is a real job so who exactly thought there’d be a television show in that? Who honestly thought that sparks would fly if you put potential employees in the same room as their potential boss? Have they never been to a real job interview – because they are this tedious, the only difference being a lack of meals to be prepared.

This is a joyless experience. The person responsible should be given a slap across the back of the head. This is truly awful television. The Boss Is Coming To Dinner has a title for a TV show but nobody thought to develop the idea much further than that title. Nobody bothered to sit down and figure out what it is about the premise that could be even slightly interesting to watch. People like cooking shows because they imagine themselves cooking, people like travel shows because they imagine themselves travelling, people like shows about falling in love because they imagine themselves falling in love. NOBODY LIKES JOB INTERVIEWS so it stands to reason that NOBODY LIKES SHOWS ABOUT JOB INTERVIEWS.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Ugly