So after five weeks of fighting, stitching, more fighting, sewing and even more fighting it’s time to bid farewell to Thelma Madine and her nine remaining traveller trainees however I don’t know how fond this goodbye will be. Just to draw out the process of Thelma picking the girls she wanted to take on as full-time employees, claiming she could only afford to employ two, we were treated to an extended edition of the show which surely would’ve been full of showing us the technical skills that these girls have learnt in the past six months. But no instead the extra minutes were spent seeing Thelma have dinner with her family, sewing tutor Paula taking the girls to a museum in Manchester and most of the girls fall out with at least one of the taxi drivers that takes them to the factory.

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It seems that the makers of Thelma’s Gypsy Girls have put themselves into a corner as far as the structure of the show is concerned because after weeks of showing the travellers’ rowdy behaviour they now have to show them progressing as we get into next week’s final show where some of them will receive job offers. It seems obvious that those behind the show don’t think people are going to watch unless there is some drama involved in the programme, which I personally don’t agree with, but contenders for those final jobs have to be highlighted. To this end the opening task sees four of the most promising girls picked to create a traveller wedding dress from scratch with help from sewing teacher with Paula the quartet ends up being Victoria, Kathleen, Shannon and Megan. It seems that this episode to an extent is showing us a little bit more of Megan, both in a positive and in a negative, as she’s been one of the girls whose been hiding in the background a bit mainly as she pals around with the much louder Victoria. Megan is Paula’s first pick to work on the wedding dress and later we see her admit that she would like to work for Thelma as she’s been good to all of the girls however this is before trouble starts brewing.

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Last week Thelma’s Gypsy Girls really hit a series low as we saw an inordinate amount of rows and the entire scheme breakdown as Thelma had a mini-breakdown meaning she left the factory. I found this representation of the gypsy girls to be fairly stereotypical of this kind of programme however this week there was hope as we saw the focus return to Thelma’s scheme to teach the girls the basics as well as her laying down the law to the most unruly of the travellers. Thelma’s first two tasks are to clear up the ruckus between Lily-Ann and Victoria that had been rumbling throughout most of last week’s episode and came to a head in a vicious scrap in a taxi. Thelma sat them both down and it became clear that Victoria’s family had told her to simply steer clear of Lily-Ann as the former seemed to be more focused on her work only starting an argument once after getting help with a dress which meant she felt the wrath of the formidable Kathleen. Meanwhile trouble-maker Margaret was coming back from a two week suspension and Thelma had to decide whether or not it was a good idea to bring her back at all eventually deciding to take her in for the night. As Margaret looked round the massive house that Thelma’s hard work had bought her she came to the realisation that if she wanted anything from the programme then she’d have to knuckle down and work hard which again was something she did.

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There was a moment in tonight’s episode of Thelma’s Gypsy Girls in which a brow-beaten Thelma looks into the camera stating that ‘it’s not like I thought it would be.’ and I have to say I agree with her because, after a promising start, the programme about her apprenticeship scheme for young traveller girls as reverted to easy stereotypes.

We’re now into the fifth week of the course, and as we are informed by the narrator, the girls haven’t progressed nearly as much as she would’ve like them to as they’re still struggling with basic sewing skills. This week, Thelma also makes the decision to try and get the girls some basic education so that they can at least have a certificate at the end of the process if the dress-maker doesn’t decide to give them a job.

After getting turned down by a college who wouldn’t give her funding, she instead has to dip further into her funds to hire Sarah a tutor who has some pressing concerns about the girls, namely Roseanne who as we see can’t even put the alphabet in order and as we are told by her new teacher she has the learning skills of a reception age child. Read more & comment »

One of the gypsy girls employed by dressmaker Thelma Madine for her BFGW spin-off show, Thelma’s Gypsy Girls, has claimed that the reality show is making her and her peers out to be “freaks.”

In an interview with the Sun’s TV Biz, Bridget Deadman, one of ten travellers who’re starring in Thelma’s Gypsy Girls, said, “Thelma wasn’t interested in teaching us anything.

“It was just a freak show which made us look violent, tarty and stupid. At times it was like being on Jeremy Kyle.”

Angry 17 year old Bridget went on, “Every stereotype there is about gypsies was pushed to the hilt, and Thelma and the camera crew seemingly ignored anything that didn’t fit that image…” Read more & comment »

In my review of last week’s episode of Thelma’s Gypsy Girls, I worried that when the focus was put back on the travellers, we would have the same mockery of their mannerisms and lack of education as we did in the previous entries into the Big Fat Gypsy Wedding franchise. My fears were to an extent warranted as we saw the girls struggle with basic maths and were also dumbstruck when Thelma tried to explain the concept of tax and insurance coming out of their wage packets.

The first element of travellers that this episode of Thelma’s Gypsy Girls taught us, was that they are often unreliable with only Margaret turning up on time for her first day, while Veronica didn’t turn up at all due to the fact that her family was off on the road. Though the main issue throughout the episode seemed to the angry nature of the girls which we learnt last week, through Shannon’s criminal record, often leads to violent altercations. It was Shannon who was part of tonight’s main incident as she stabbed the quiet and intelligent Bridget in the knee with a pin, while at the same time hurting her with some fairly violent insults though it seemed clear that she was not the only one to blame as Margaret was also complicit in the attack.

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I can’t be the only one who was slightly surprised when one of Channel 4′s biggest hits in year turned out to be a documentary about a bunch of travelers, however millions of people tuned in to each instalment of Big Fat Gypsy Weddings making it a huge success. Personally I found the whole phenomenon staggering as each programme was fairly similar to the one before and I also felt that the traveller brides were being set up to be laughed at, mainly due to the ridiculous nature of the dresses that they’d chosen to wear. The one bright spot in each of the documentaries was the woman who made the dresses – Thelma Madine – who seemed like a genuinely intelligent woman who loved what she did so thankfully she’s now got her own spin-off show entitled Thelma’s Gypsy Girls.

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So now the football is finished and the tennis has almost come to an end it seems that there are tons of new shows kicking off this week so it’s been a struggle to whittle them down to five however below are my final choices.

Superstar (ITV1, Sat 7:25pm & Sun,8pm)
Saturday nights have seemed awfully quiet since The Voice and Britain’s Got Talent left us back in May thankfully until The X-Factor returns we have a stopgap in the form of Superstar. In fact it does seem that Superstar has been coming for a long time now ever since Andrew Lloyd-Webber announced his intention of finding a lead to his new production of Jesus Christ Superstar which is set to open at the 02. It seems that his Lordship has defected to ITV after several years of finding talent on BBC1 but maybe this time the casting process is a little bit too controversial for the Beeb so Graham Norton has been replaced by Amanada Holden as the host of this endeavour.

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As fans of Big Fat Gypsy Weddings will of course know, Liverpudlian dressmaker Thelma Madine is the go to gal for travellers wishing to make a statement with their wedding or occasion frocks…

And she is set to star in her own spin-off show, entitled Thelma’s Gypsy Girls, which will see her tutoring ten traveller girls in the art of dressmaking.

However, in an interview with the Daily Mirror about the show – which debuts on Channel 4 next Sunday – 8th July – at 9pm, Thelma revealed that the project turned out to be far more difficult than she could have imagined.

Here’s what C4 say of the show…

Thelma begins the search for her ten new trainees. All of them are gypsies or travellers, some left school at 11 and some are unable to read, write or even tell the time… Read more & comment »