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When I read reports that Viceland, the television channel owned by Vice Media, had achieved an audience figure of zero on some nights following its launch in the UK last month, I assumed we were looking at a London Live situation.
In my mind’s eye, I saw rolling amateur-hour dross, and a collection of viewers that would forever comprise the lost, the insensible and the truly hungover. But it turns out I was wrong – about Viceland UK’s content, if not its audience. Not for nothing is its creative king Spike Jonze, the director of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. OK, the execution of its documentaries is unbearably earnest at times, and its hipster presenters, with their up-speak and on-tap cheeriness, can be madly irritating. Nevertheless, here is a pretty fast-flowing stream of groovy ideas, built for the enjoyment and improvement of millennials everywhere. It doesn’t half put the new home of The Great British Bake Off to shame.