[Harry!]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Another month of US TV, another set of wannabe stars as Rock The Cradle and I Know My Child's A Star hog the screens. Luckily each show has a saving grace - and it's nothing to do with singing

The current jewel in MTV's crown is Rock The Cradle. This co-production with the actual Idol producers, searches for a superstar among the ranks of rock offspring. Brilliant idea. The only thing that could go wrong with such a stellar concept would be if there weren't enough sons and daughters of musicians who wanted to follow in the family footsteps. We know this to not be the case. Even those few of us with minds uncorrupted by celebrity piffle could probably cobble together a list of suitable candidates. Sting's son. Billy Joel's daughter. Courtney Love's kid. Ice-T's lad. Pat Benatar's brat. That's just off the top of my head. Rock The Cradle has none of them. What it has is people who said "yes". The son of the singer from Twisted Sister. The daughter of a Doobie Brother. Lil B Sure!, the pride and joy of New Jack Swing-era R&B sensation, Al B Sure! MC Hammer's girl. A child who Bobby Brown admits to having fathered. Oh yes and Lucy Walsh, whose old man is Joe Walsh from the Eagles and whose clear and unaffected performances have so far won over the judges and the audience. Which might be because Lucy makes a living as a backing singer, she's been signed to a major label and has released an album. Whereas Lil B Sure!, by his own admission, likes to sleep a lot, the Doobie daughter enjoys a warble in the shower and the only time Bobby Brown's boy gets to spend any time with his old man is if they're both together on a TV show. So, even though every judge - Belinda Carlisle fits perfectly into Paula Abdul's straitjacket - is forced to flatter the competitors with an enthusiastic, "Talent's in your DNA," Rock The Cradle is an unfair comparison between a singer and some people who like to sing.

Luckily, the series has a wild card. Or, to be more accurate, it's got a formerly bulimic, cosmetically mangled card, in the shape of young Chloe Lattanzi, the daughter of Olivia Newton-John and - at first glance, one might assume - Pete Burns. Lucy Walsh may remain in key and possess a serviceable sense of rhythm but Chloe is probably going to emerge from this mess with, if not a record deal, certainly her own reality off-shoot. No matter what song she's called upon to perform, in her own head she's playing the lead in the long-running musical Björk Possessed By Satan. Making the possibility of a Chloe show even more likely is the presence in the audience of the lovely, delusional Olivia Newton-John. Asked to comment on her daughter's latest honking, screechy performance, Olivia whispered, "When she hit that note, I got goosebumps..." Only a mother could say so much with so few words...
Where Rock The Cradle celebrates the non-judgmental love between parent and child, sister station VH1's I Know My Kid's A Star is a stirring advocation of matricide. Granted, there was some reality TV jiggery-pokery at work. When the gaggle of insane, pushy stage moms signed up for the show, they thought they were taking part in something called America's Next Child Star. They assumed it was going to be a competition between their talented tots. They didn't think it was going to be an intervention. They especially didn't think it was going to be an intervention presided by Danny Bonaduce. There's not a moment the red-headed, red-faced, 'roided-out ex-Partridge Family scandal magnet spends on screen when he's not screaming into the mad, stretched faces of the ambitious moms. "Look at me!" he howls, sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally, "Look at what I've become. You are going to do this to your children." He takes them on a tour of Hollywood disaster spots: "This is where Lindsay Lohan passed out! This is where Britney wigged out! Does that make you think twice about the world you're dragging your kids into?"

Of course, none of them listen to him. They can't hear him because they're too busy screaming at each other and, sadly, their kids. "You're screwing this up for both of us. You're not working hard enough. Focus!" barks more than one mother into the trembling face of her stressed-out child. And just as Rock The Cradle is saved by the peculiar magic of Chloe Lattanzi, so I Know My Kid's A Star has its own special train wreck. When lovely little Hayley Lourdes freezes up during her big song, a stick-thin apparition in leopardskin and Botox staggers into view. It's her mom, Rocky. "What?" bellows Rocky. "Is my tampon hanging out?" Even though the show is supposed to be a talent contest and little Hayley has nothing to offer beyond being decorative, Bonaduce has sent several far more gifted kids (and their idiot parents) packing simply because, without Rocky, there is no series. She's a mood-swinging, mascara-stained embodiment of thwarted dreams who doesn't shrink from picking fights with even the most mild-mannered of the other moms or their kids. But the unexpected and endearing thing about Rocky is that she never takes her insanity out on Hayley. She's only ever encouraging. When all the other pushy moms are guilting their kids with monologues about how much they've sacrificed, the maddest woman in the house turns out to be the best mother.

It's been a banner month for actresses ill-served by movies. Parker Posey, the perennial queen of indie quirk and Judy Greer, every leading lady's sardonic best friend, both turned up in their own vehicles. Posey starred in The Return Of Jezebel James, which unfortunately was on Fox, a network that likes its sitcoms to have laughter tracks. The result was that Posey had to rein in her quirk. Judy Greer, by comparison, shone in the lovely but little-seen Miss Guided, a sweet-natured comedy of embarrassment about a former high school dork who returns to her old seat of learning as a guidance teacher. Her hopes that the popularity and coolness that evaded her as a teen will finally materialise are continually but not maliciously dashed. The appetite of American networks for UK sitcom formats seems almost bottomless. Maybe this is the rare show that could make the reverse journey.