OutlanderRating: First Dates HotelRating: There has to be a prize for it.
Books boast the Literary Review’s Bad Sex Award, movies stage the Golden Raspberries or Razzies. Television deserves its own medals for sheer, tongue-lolling awfulness. Call them the TraVesties.This year’s Worst TraVesty must go to Outlander (More4), the time-travelling romance, for a scene of treachery and slaughter so hilarious, I had to keep pausing to wipe my eyes. This time, the couple are shipwrecked in the New World.

No one cares: as long as Jamie keeps taking his shirt off to hold Claire close and pledge undying passion in gruffly tender murmurs, devotees of Outlander will forgive it almost anythingFans of this show have a high tolerance for tosh.

Last year they put up with a witch who bathed in the blood of virgins, before she was put to death by heroine Claire (Caitriona Balfe) — a World War II medic who was transported back to the 18th century and now is kept prisoner there by her love for Highland warrior Jamie (Sam Heughan).This time, the couple are shipwrecked in the New World.

No one cares: as long as Jamie keeps taking his shirt off to hold Claire close and pledge undying passion in gruffly tender murmurs, devotees of Outlander will forgive it almost anything.That interminable five minutes of misery in a tavern near the start, for instance, as the cast joined in a Gaelic folk dirge — that didn’t matter, as long as the romance was steamy and simmering, ready to boil over in the next scene. This year’s Worst TraVesty must go to Outlander (More4), the time-travelling romance, for a scene of treachery and slaughter so hilarious, I had to keep pausing to wipe my eyesAnd there was lots of that, including a long bedroom lecture from Claire about the impending American War of Independence, while Jamie admired the way she unrolled her silk stockings.She tried to explain about the American Dream.

‘Is that the same as our dream?’ asked Jamie, gruffly yet tenderly. Claire agreed it was, and they kissed.None of this was unforgivably awful — not dire enough to win prizes, at any rate. But then, as Claire and Jamie were rowed downriver to begin a new life on a plantation together, something weirdly incongruous began to happen.The sound faded out, to be replaced by soft jazz music.

Ray Charles began to sing his excruciating, florid version of America The Beautiful, as fake as processed cheese. And just as I was beginning to wish for a return of the Gaelic tavern choir, Jamie and TRAVESTIS PORTO Claire were attacked by river pirates.On and on crooned Ray, as the pirates laughed evil laughs, silently in the faces of our lovebirds.  RELATED ARTICLES

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The murderous villains were led by a man Jamie had saved from the Redcoats, who was intent on stealing Claire’s wedding ring and forcing her husband to watch . . . the unutterable beast.Claire tried to swallow the ring.
The pirate chief prised it from her mouth. Jamie writhed in helpless agony, Ray kept wringing the life out of America The Beautiful, and I laughed so much I got hiccups and had to stick my head under the tap.The romantic shenanigans of First Dates Hotel (C4) were bland by comparison — even though this week’s episode had to return to last week’s couples, because the set-up was so complicated. Estate agent Georgia was dining with ex-squaddie Robbie.

Her friend Rachel was being chatted up by tattooed Blain. First Dates Hotel’s Fred Sirieix is pictured above with restaurant manager Francesca MartuscielloRobbie blew his chances early on, by admitting he tended to go for girls who were ‘convenient’.Blain seemed smitten, but Rachel thought he had ‘a nice personality’ which is never good. Rachel and Georgia kept hinting that actually they fancied each other.

‘Nice!’ said Blain. Eventually, he started dating Georgia.When modern love is that crass and banal, you can’t blame a woman for wanting to be whisked off to the 18th century and ravished. But please, not to a soft jazz soundtrack. Ultra-violence of the night: An errant crook was trapped in a steel cage and buried alive in liquid concrete, in Gangs Of London (Sky Atlantic) — just one of the ways this series kills off characters with offhand brutality.

So callous, it’s almost flippant.