My New Best Friend

My New Best Friend
Genre	Hidden Camera Comedy
Starring	Marc Wootton
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	6
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	Channel 4
Original run	2003 – 2003

My New Best Friend is a British Comedy broadcast on Channel 4 during 2003. The idea was a hidden camera show where a member of the public would enter into an agreement to be filmed for a whole weekend with the task of convincing their friends and family a character being played by Marc Wootton was their new best friend. Their reward being a prize of £10,000. What made the game difficult was Marc's character constantly embarrassing them in front of their family and friends to extreme levels, but they had to agree and go along to everything he said. Marc Wootton's characters were chosen for different episodes to make them as different from the contestant as possible to make it difficult for their friends and family to be convinced.

Once they have made it through the weekend the cameras capture the moment where Marc gives them the money and leaves the scene. The contestant is left to explain the whole situation was a TV program and a game to win £10,000 to their friends and family.

My New Best Friend won the Rose D'or Golden Rose Award at Montreux (2004) and a British Comedy Award for Best New TV Comedy (2003)

Characters

Episode 1: Stevie

Stevie is an extremely camp man, he goes to stay with Tim. A highlight of the episode is making Tim tell his best friends he is gay and performs a camp sexual dance in front of them to win the money before all is revealed.

Episode 2: Daniel

Tiffany has to entertain Daniel, a stereotypical internet Lord of the Rings loving nerd. Highlights of the episode include Tiffany being forced to tell her father and sister that she and Daniel are engaged to be married, it does not go down well.

Episode 3: Wicky

Michael is a young, tidy man, a keen footballer. He will be in the company of Wicky, a new age hippie for the weekend. In the finale, he is forced to tell his father he has given up his job in IT and has a seven year old son, not to his father's amusement.

Episode 4: Sasha

Sasha is a rich and arrogant snob who thinks he can buy friends and love. Matt has to put up with him for the weekend, highlights include Sasha offering money for sex off Matt's close female friend and making Matt march round the coffee table for an hour to the tune "The Grand Old Duke of York". In a bizarre twist Sasha sets the task to repeat the song 4 times and missing out various up's and down's in the lyrics in a seemingly impossible routine that Matt cannot get right much to both of their frustrations. Matt is the only contestant of the series not to win the money. The final straw was Sasha telling Matt's parents that they were planning to go to a resort in the Philippines where they would eat women.

Episode 5: Simon

Sam has to deal with the antics of Simon, the character Simon is totally obsessed with Sam and everything he does, he believes Sam to be the coolest man in the world. He copies everything he does and appears mentally unstable much to Sam's friends disbelief.

Episode 6: Gary

Gary is an intimidating , aggressive man. Emma must put up with him for a whole weekend. He makes her go to a seedy photoshoot in a warehouse, then invites her mum along to, and eventually into, the photoshoot. She then ended up telling her friends she was going to star in a pornographic film and ended up in a staged drugs deal which her friends could not believe.

DVD release

The series is available as a bonus third disk for the DVD release of High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman, also starring Marc Wootton.

German adaptation

In the German adaption of the show, "Mein neuer Freund", former MTV-VJ Christian Ulmen plays Marc Wootton's part. Some of the characters played by Ulmen are exactly the same as in "My new best friend":

• "Veith" ("Stevie")
• "Jürgen" ("Gary")
• "Marcel" ("Simon")
• "Alexander von Eich" ("Sasha")

Other characters are:

• "Uwe", a childish nerd with lots of allergies, similar to "Daniel"
• "Martina", who used to be "Martin" in his earlier life. The male candidate has to tell his friends and family, that Martina has been his best buddy in old school days and that he fell in love with him/her, after Martin turned into Martina
• "Collin", an American-German schizo freak who constantly wants to contact aliens
• "Ecke", a pot smoking good-for-nothing
• "Knut", a singer-songwriter-entertainer-painter (who really has no idea of any of these things), hates to wash himself and loves corny jokes

The audience ratings were low so "ProSieben" (the TV station) dropped the show after having broadcast only one episode. But a devoted fan community emerging from the internet addressed a petition in order to bring "Mein neuer Freund" back on the screen - and succeeded. It was the first time in German TV that such a thing happened.

See also

My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance, a similar show

External links

• My New Best Friend at Channel4.com
• - Marc Wootton's official website and blog