Tulisa, Dappy and Fazer of North London pop phenomenon N-Dubz – or, if you prefer, Tula Constavlos, her cousin Dino Constavlos and their schoolfriend Richard Rawson – are easy to mock, and Channel 4 know it. The first episode of this showbiz slice-of-life documentary about the ebullient trio is so slathered with the kind of hideously knowing upper-middle-class arched-eybrow voiceover that characterises the whole of the channel's T4 youth programming strand that you have to wonder if they actually credit the viewer with the ability to form an opinion at all.
It's true there are occasions when N-Dubz do show the idiocy of youth: picking fights with rival musicians, drawing on each other with pens like bored schoolkids at a book signing, Tulisa turning up drunk to play in a charity football match. But in these instances the band are quite capable of showing themselves up without the narrator telling us what to think. And when the garrulous Dappy's most innocuous comments – say, that the band's name is a contraction of the “NW” from their home postcode, or that he thinks benefits shouldn't be cut by the new government as they help people with no hope – are instantly met with an arch “can you imagine” or “oh really” I found myself wanting to bellow “JUST LET THE LAD SPEAK” at the telly.
The thing is, once you get past this overlay of sneering, N-Dubz are actually quite engaging kids. Yes, they're spectacularly full of themselves in the sort of way that only people who've come into great wealth at a young age can be, and yes they play up to the Daily Mail nightmare of surly, insolent hoodies at points, but get past the specifics of fashions and slang and what you're really looking at are good, old-fashioned scallywags. Dappy in particular, when he's not flying off the handle or leaping around the place like a lecherous goblin with ADHD, is full of hilarious cheek and snappy bits of lateral thinking: his extended riff on how having an Oyster card makes him “legit” is laugh-out-loud funny.
So ultimately, this is unusually watchable for a pop programme aimed at teens – but only because the conflicted, three-dimensional, and ultimately oddly charming characters of the subjects emerge despite the programme makers' patronising intentions. Their significance as unlikely trailblazers for the current explosion of grassroots multicultural British pop also means that the rest of the series will be fascinating to follow if, as is hinted, it shows more about their relationship to the industry around them. But I do find myself wondering, with all the interactivity and special features available to programme makers, if it wouldn't be so very hard for Channel 4 to provide an option to watch their programmes with the hatefully withering irony levels turned down.
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