Britney and Kevin: Chaotic
VH1
In a nutshell: Stick Britney Spears in a room full of mirrors ’til she gets 50 years of bad luck.
The 411: Can you handle my truth? It’s an arresting title for the first episode of a reality TV show. It speaks of a few too many hours of airport departure lounge self-help reading or bleary-eyed daytime telly talk-show surfing in expensive hotel rooms. But it’s a fair point – can somebody as famous as Britney Spears still deal with anyone’s reality? Can you handle hers?
"She comes across as a sweet, plain-speaking trollop with a lot of time to kill who likes to think about, you know, stuff."
Britney and Kevin: Chaotic (executive producers Britney Spears and Kevin Federline) is all about Britney turning the camera on herself and her kerrazy lifestyle. The series kicks off with her touring Britain, dragging Kevin Federline, a drawling alpha male redneck (with a vulnerable heart he hides even from himself yuh-huh), along with her.
Dealing as she does with music business parasites and sycophantic cabbages every day you could forgive Britney her lapses into delusion. But she comes across as a sweet, plain-speaking trollop with a lot of time to kill who likes to think about, you know, stuff.
The series starts with Britney doorstepping her tour entourage with "what do you feel about commitment and marriage?" She doesn’t believe in marriage – ‘cept for those two times she got married – and admits that she is a Bitter Betty which, tragically, does not involve a liking for Old Speckled Hen. I think it means that Justin Timberlake is now engaged to Cameron Diaz, the one celebrity on the planet spottier than her.
Poor old Britney – you can’t help liking her. Consumed by ambition yet can’t sing a note. With her piggy eyes, stumpy little legs and bad skin she’s an unlikely sex symbol. But scrubbing up well and a phenomenal work-rate count for a lot in the business we all know Britney’s been doing this shit since The Mousketeers.
She seems preoccupied with gurning at the camera and telling everyone how many times she’s had sex that day. Like a glammed up version of the Mel B character from Bo Selecta ("now and again we do a bit of fooking").
“Like a glammed up a version of the Mel B character from Bo Selecta ("now and again we do a bit of fooking").”
Britney is common as muck and unlike, say, Victoria Beckham she has no pretensions to be otherwise. Britney revels in her trailer trash roots and lets everyone know it.
Continuing with her in-your-face vox pops Britney asks every damn fool she meets "what’s your favourite sexual position?" like she’s angling for Graham Norton‘s job or something.
This is Britney: funny, filthy, common. She’s your everyday girl. The girl next door (if you happen to live next to the Clampetts).
The best thing about it: Britney’s theories about, y’know, life and stuff.
The worst thing about it: Once you get past the fact that it’s Britney Spears, it is pretty dull.
The verdict on Britney and Kevin: Chaotic: Not just an innocent girl
Marks out of 10: 6