Not to be confused with the very good film of the same name, ITV’s very bad new game show Meet The Parents leaves you feeling like you’ve lost something. The will to live.

Hosted by – surprise, surprise – Holly Willoughby, this moronic hour-long nightmare is another one of those soul-destroying Saturday evening programmes that try so hard to be fun, fun, fun… but are always crap, crap, crap. Bang On The Money, Go For It! and now this. Three strikes and you’re out.

The latest depressing assault on our senses is as cheap and tacky as television gets. And that’s saying something. Mums and dads pimping their kids to potential lovers. Noisily. Blind Date without the laughs. Or the charm.

Where do they find these shrieking contestants? Do they grow them on some sort of farm? Were these awful people literally born in a barn? And raised with animals? None of them seem to have the faintest idea about decorum.

Here’s Hollie’s mother Claire advertising the allure of her squirming daughter: “She went to school with no knickers on!” Anxious to complete this treasured family anecdote, proud father Paul boomed: “She was only five at the time.” Isn’t that special?

Back to Hollie: “I’m wearing knickers tonight!” Good to know. Thanks for keeping us in the loop. After this sensational revelation, the tone went even further downhill. No mean feat.

As far as I can work out (and in so far as I care), the idea is that the singletons in the hot seat bombard the parents with banal questions and then decide whether they want to go out with their offspring. Blind Date-style, they can’t see the three romantic desperadoes on offer. But they can sure as hell hear them. Because they’re all sitting in a weird glass tank screaming their heads off.

When Lewis announced he was looking for an intelligent partner, Imani yelled: “I’m so smart!” Yes, eat your heart out Einstein. “He’s mine!” added Imani. But her mum Sue was almost as keen. “I fink he’s a lot of all right!” she hollered.

But we mustn’t forget the lovely Suzie, whose single parent is called Helle. The second ‘e’ is optional. “We live together, we work together, we do everything together,” bellowed Suzie. They also pedal the life cycles at the gym together. Incredibly slowly.

By now the oldsters were all dancing appallingly at Lewis’s request. And Holly was warning them: “This is your last moment to sell your daughters.” Children for sale. That’s the essence of this uplifting format. Ladies and gentlemen… you are watching ITV.

Anyway, despite the fact she was disappointingly wearing knickers, Lewis opted to hit the town with Hollie. And the happy couple were filmed glamorously shuffling past the dustbins in the bowels of ITV’s detritus-strewn studios before climbing into a London taxi and heading to a pretend restaurant for dinner.

Where, in an hilarious twist, Hollie’s parents were in an adjacent room watching the contrived proceedings unfold. Then they arrived at the table just in time for their daughter and Lewis to agree they were a great match. Even though they weren’t.

“Having my parents crash my date was a massive shock,” insisted Hollie, unconvincingly.

But hey, never let it be said that the egalitarian channel that brought you Take Me Out is sexist. After Lewis along came lonely heart Suzanne facing the grim prospect of choosing between three beaming bozos.

When deep space northerner Paddy let slip he had hairy legs, Ms Willoughby made him pull up his trousers and ruthlessly wax-stripped him. As Paddy grimaced with pain, Suzanne just shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t give a damn if he was hairy or not. Classic irrelevant tellyfilla. Gotta pad out the emptiness somehow.

In the end, Suzanne rejected Paddy in favour of the less hairy Adam who had a way with words. An inept way.

“We’re celebrating being together. Our gravitas,” he declared. “I talk like I swallowed a dictionary.” Try reading it, mate. You might find out what gravitas means.

Same drill. Through the studios, past the dustbins, into the cab, onto the pretend restaurant where Adam’s mum Rebecca was waiting like a voyeur.

“He eats like a pig,” she snarled. Nice. As Adam and Suzanne kissed for the cameras, Holly purred: “They’ve definitely got the taste for each other.” Ah shut up. No wonder everyone’s watching Strictly on the Beeb.