Mary Queen of Shops

Mary Queen of Shops is the right kind of reality TV, the format where you take an expert who knows there stuff and let them help real people to turn around their failing businesses. In many ways its Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares for girls (no effing and blinding and chest bumping) meets 'The Troubleshooter', the one where the now deceased Sir John Harvey Jones would come in and try and turn around much bigger businesses. Where as most of his challenges were traditional heavy industries, Mary Portas, some sort of hands on fashion guru, takes on the flimsy and vacuous world of fashion boutiques, which means we get to meet a lot of likewise people and accompanying ...

This really is a terrific and informative show. Mary Portas visits ailing struggling shops, identifies why they are failing and prescribes the solution. She is hard where she needs to be and quite ruthless with those she is trying to help. She has an expert eye and can usually tell from the shop window exactly why the business needs her help. She usually takes drastic action and suggests many things that are quite outside the owners' 'comfort zone' but the results are never less than amazing. With every show I have seen she has put the shop back on the retailing map. She has had to deal with some very stubborn, and indeed quite rude, ...