How to Get Rich: Secrets of China, BBC3 - TV review: Billie JD Porter gives Stacey Dooley a run for her money

She is totes inappropes, but somehow likeable 

Daisy Wyatt
Tuesday 08 September 2015 22:00 BST
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Secrets of China
Secrets of China

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Like so many of BBC3's Stacey Dooley-fronted shows, BBC1's The World's Worst Place to Be Disabled? relied too heavily on Sophie Morgan's own experiences and reactions to reach an objective conclusion.

But Morgan's style of presenting was nothing compared with Billie JD Porter's in the closing episode of her BBC3 series How to Get Rich: Secrets of China. Dooley has stiff competition in the form of this 23-year-old former Vice music journalist turned model, TV presenter and documentary maker.

If you weren't too distracted by Porter's black scrunchy, which spent the entire hour looking like it was about to fall out of her hair at any moment, you may have caught several of her outfit changes, not least the pink all-in-one she chose to wear to play golf with a Chinese entrepreneur. Golf, she explained, was banned by Chairman Mao, but the presenter had bigger things on her mind. "This jumpsuit has got quite an intense camel toe situation going on," she drawled to camera as she hunched over the hole to avoid her golf partner noticing.

Another scene filmed on a beach in Hainan Island, ostensibly to show how the country's growing middle classes are taking more holidays, became an excuse for Porter to flaunt her bikini, laugh at Chinese people's sun hats and flirt with a banana boat man.

As for getting rich, only a few minutes were spent talking to young millionaires about how they afforded their Lamborghinis. And as for China's secrets, Porter spilled enough of her own to account for the country's 1.3 billion. She was totes inappropes but somehow likeable.

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