Any rival reality-TV makers watching Channel 5 on Thursday will, I suspect, have been both mystified and slightly embarrassed at not having thought up Bad Habits, Holy Orders themselves. After all, the concept is a blindingly obvious one. Take five young women whose primary interests are selfies, booze and clubbing and make them live like nuns for a month. And not metaphorically either: the five are staying with the Daughters of Divine Charity at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Swaffham, where days filled with prayer, reflection, manual work and wholesome play end at a 10 p.m. bedtime.
The first episode began by taking perhaps unnecessary care to make sure we understood the contrast between the two sets of women: cutting from the nuns praying in chapel to the girls twerking in nightclubs, from the taking of the communion chalice to the swigging of vodka. Less predictably, all concerned were then asked to describe their ideal man, with the girls mostly citing footballers and the nuns mostly pleading the fifth amendment — although one did admit that she’d favour somebody who’s ‘tall, slim’ and, maybe not insignificantly, ‘a carpenter’.
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