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Features

Monthly media and arts column

I’ve got to confess that I’m a bit behind the times. The Secret Millionaire series was first shown at the beginning of the year but I have only just caught it in repeats on More4.

Eleanor Margesson

But I’ve found it so compelling that I have to talk about it. The series is produced by RDF media, the company who brought us Wife Swap, a programme which specialises in putting people into an alien situation in an alien culture and getting them riled up in the pressure cooker environment of an often quite bizarre family. Great TV, but not very subtle. Mercifully, The Secret Millionaire is free from the emotional firestorms that are born from big characters having to justify their lifestyles to people they don’t like. Instead, it is about people making quite a big effort to help others at quite a cost to themselves.