Gems TV, ITV

The Bennet family had an issue. Time to get the Austenesque quips out of the way.

For the Bennets in Gems TV the truth universally acknowledged was, roughly: “That a £100 million family-run jewellery television channel risking running out of its best-selling African gem, not to mention suffering from a shortage of screen presenters who can flog the stuff, must be in want of a friendly television documentary format to get them out of their fix.” (For the record, no one seemed sure if it was a single “t” or a double one in Bennet: ITV gave them one – closet Janeites there, eh? – the usually canonic Radio Times, two.)

Such was the world of ITV’s primetime offering last night: at least Gems TV tripped off the tongue a lot better than the working title “'Kings of Teleshopping”, didn’t it? The business is what’s known as a “reverse auction jewellery shopping channel”, and if you haven’t come across it before in the wider, wilder reaches of cable, then check out Sky Channel 655, Freeview Channel 43, or even “streamed live on our website Gemporia.com”. Clearly millions of viewers are regulars if the sales are anything to go by, both in the UK and, you suspect particularly, across the pond.

Their immediate problem was that supplies of Tanzanite were running perilously low

That was the background to Ian Denyer’s entertaining enough documentary, narrated with a seemingly straight face by Liza Tarbuck, though you couldn’t quite work out whether this was real-life serious fare, or something more artfully tongue-in-cheek. From opening minutes at this “whackiest of TV stations”, also a real fast growing business (even though we were told more than once that it was run out of a shed near Birmingham), the action was “go-go-go!”.

They broadcast 24 hours a day. Steve Bennet discovered a decade ago that in the jewellery business you could either sell one item a week for a lot of money, or thousands a week for rather less; he’d chosen the latter route. This Mr Bennet was the “hunter for gemstones” – and he seemed very good at that job when we saw him out in the African mines – supported by Mrs Bennet (“the quiet one”) and Master Bennet (“the heart-throb”). The descriptive irony was undisguised on the last two. A son-in-law ran the American operations.

Their immediate problem was that supplies of the outfit's best-selling blue gem Tanzanite (named after its country of origin, in case you were wondering) were running perilously low. Plus, the lucrative Christmas season was approaching, and the energies of on-screen presenters were flagging. Hence, almost simultaneously, the double tasks of investigating the supply chain, and auditioning more presenters. The latter proved more straightforward, allowing viewers the anxious pleasure of those “will they, won’t they make it?” moments familiar from this documentary's closest cousin, reality TV.

The former made for more interesting viewing, as Steve went off to Tanzania. Tanzanite supplies were indeed kaput, but there was another gem direction to gamble on, called something like specitite. Just a couple of problems, though. One, that it was bright orange, as far away from best-selling tanzanite blue as possible, and therefore risky, but that could be fixed by energetic marketing impro. The other was the name – you did wonder whether no one had spotted the associations with certain other better-known “-ite” products before – which could be finessed by renaming it as the romantic "Tulelei", the stone’s name in Masai. And after various tense developments, Tulelei was duly launched, apparently to record success.

The elephantine presence in this retail room was surely that of Gerard Ratner

Somewhere in the last ten minutes I rather lost track as to whether Gems TV, the company, actually won the hyped “Retailer of the Year” at the Jewellery Industry Awards or not; I suspect that one was glossed over. As were other revealing subjects too, though a brief closing strand gave us the chance to hear from some of the company’s clients. They bought the stuff to give themselves a treat, they said. And nowt wrong in that, before you ask.

But the most human strands were missing. For example, cheery “Master Bennet” (pictured, above right) ended up working a solitary 15-hour Christmas Day salesman-presenter shift, which gave a new take on the idea of the family business. All the time the elephantine presence in this retail room was surely that of Gerard Ratner. He was the one, you may remember, who spectacularly kiboshed his own jewellery business. “People say, ‘How can you sell this for such a low price?’” Ratner opined rhetorically in public, way back in 1991. “I say, ‘Because it's total crap’.” All said, Gems TV wasn't a half-bad watch.