The Networks Really Do Think We Are Fuckwits

So Eleven launched their big new Saturday night event on the weekend. It was the big shiny Brit variety import Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway.

But here's a few things you need to know first:

• Eleven is one of those major network boutique channels – it's Ten's dumping ground… ahem sorry, youth network, home to what's left of Neighbours.

• Ant & Dec are TV icons in the UK. They are former child actors-turned-pop stars-turned-everyhost. They are unknown here despite the fact they host the UK's biggest reality competition show I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here – filmed annually in Australia.

• Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway was a blockbuster hit for UK network ITV throughout the noughties until the BBC put Doctor Who up against it – the show went into hiatus, returning, turbo-charged in 2013.

Now it has landed in our Saturday night viewing wasteland.

On a Saturday evening, Eleven regularly ranks tenth amongst the free-to-air networks – bet you didn't even realise there were ten free-to-air-networks broadcasting on a Saturday.

Ads for A&DSNT promised a bit of glitz and glamour for our Satdee nitez in - it even promised dinky-di A-listers Ricky Gervais and Mila Kunis.

But instead we got served Hey Hey It's Saturday minus the ostrich.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of Ant & Dec's single entendre routines and mum-friendly cheekiness, they pull it off far more successfully than our own Rove McManus. I wish some network here would broadcast their I'm A Celeb torturefest on a regular basis. But this Takeaway business…

Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway is a string of viewer/studio competitions with prizes ranging from new cars and Vegas holidays to gravy and butter.

Gervais appeared as 'guest announcer' – a handful of pre-recorded spiels that barely gave him enough time to spin more than one or two of his smarmy putdowns.

Kunis was also a pre-recorded appearance where she took part in a gimmicky interview with a pair of kids known as 'Little Ant & Dec'. Sigh.

Then in another pre-recorded stunt we glimpsed a millisecond of pop singers Little Mix.

Saturday night's highlight was a prank the hosts played on Jeremy Kyle. Who? Yeah, unless you are an addict of daytime talk, that means nothing to you – however he is the UK's number one TV villain.

But all the above was just padding inbetween the competitions which mean nothing to an Australian audience. We can neither participate nor relate to those faraway Poms winning (or not) the prizes via a series of very lame challenges laid out for them by Ant & Dec. And, they really could do with some nasty challenges like they use in I'm A Celeb. Who wants to see a man win money for singing on stage with Little Mix when he could be locked in a cage that can only be opened with a nearby key guarded by poisonous snakes?

To make this 'new' primetime viewing even more insulting to our senses, it's actually a year old. Kunis was on plugging the cinema release of her film Oz.

Maybe, this show is part of some package deal Eleven cut with ITV (they also screen the UK network's 2013 season of Dancing On Ice straight after Takeaway) and we can only hope that I'm A Celeb is part of that deal.

But to dish this dated schlock up as primetime Saturday night viewing in Australia as if it is something exciting and new is to display a fundamental lack of understanding of what we want to see on TV.

At this point, Eleven may rate just as well if they totally strip their Saturday night scheduling and scroll the following across the screen: “YOU FUCKWITS WILL WATCH ANY OLD SHIT.”