This therapeutic new dashcam show makes you sit in traffic, dodge potholes and slow to avoid pigeons – but if you give yourself over to it, it could change you forever
I don’t know if you remember, but a few years ago, when
YouTube figured out its algorithm and vloggers suddenly went stratospheric, there were a number of failed attempts to port internet-famous people over to actual TV. So, like, Zoella would turn up at some point. A boyish-faced YouTuber would chuckle through an entire ITV panel show without saying anything. Someone with a gossip channel would clunkily work the red carpet before a low-level awards show. This was all fine, but the experiments were doomed – YouTubers thrive when they are in complete control of their jump cuts, how often they are allowed to make a squealing noise, and whether everything they’ve said can turn out to be a prank all along. None of those tropes sat comfortably on actual television, for people with fully developed prefrontal cortexes.
There’s an uneasy parlay between TV and internet video now – KSI is always doing Bake Off or something, Saffron Barker did Strictly – but fundamentally they are two opposed worlds. YouTube is always going to be for people who get excited to see how much a balloon can be inflated before it explodes. Television can’t compete with that.