If your tear ducts want cleansing or you just need a jolly good cry, then Oprah's Big Give, which started on TV3 last night, is for you.
Apparently after exhaustive auditions the length and breadth of America, 10 people were selected to compete against each other to become the biggest givers.
One wonders what goes on in the audition process to arrive at someone deemed suitable for big giving.
Only in America, where everything has to be bigger and better than anywhere else, could this vulgar show have eventuated.
Americans just can't give, they have to give big and when they do it they need an audience to stand around and applaud to make them feel good and virtuous about giving because it's no fun giving when no one's looking.
We've seen this on those extreme home makeover shows where hosts, who charge round as if they're fuelled on P, swamp destitute families with luxury homes, cars and a huge rates and whopping power bill when the team walks away.
But hey, they can always sell up and move to Beverly. Maybe they could immigrate to New Zealand and get a spot on Mucking In.
In this show giving is about receiving because the twist is that. And guess what? The biggest giver winds up at the end of the journey getting a truck load of Oprah dollars.
Shucks, as if the possibility of that outcome hadn't occurred to the contestants who, if they've done their Oprah homework, would know that Lady Bountiful is prone to random acts of well- publicised generosity.
Remember when everyone in the audience got a posh car?
One would have thought that fundraisers extraordinaire would have been in the final 10 but among their number was Kim, who had led a me-me-me life and had an epiphany that she wanted to give- give-give.
When she reached the ripe old age of 39 she realised that what she needed was "boobs, Botox or a turnaround". I immediately wondered if turnaround was a new augmentation procedure.
And there was Brandi, a pageant queen, who said that she was battle fit and had plenty of character because as a Miss USA title holder she'd had all sorts of heinous acts done to her - including having her dress cut up.
For the first challenge, Brandi got teamed up with Cameron, who'd had his first business at the age of nine and made his first million by the time he left college. He was only 22 but he looked as old and as strange as a social credit voter from the Bruce Beetham era.
The first challenge was a complete ripoff of The Amazing Race as five pairs of competitors raced to their black SVUs and charged off to accost a deserving person.
Kim and Marlene got hopelessly lost and started bickering, failing to find their person in need for a whole 24 hours. He was a soldier who'd got three purple hearts and a medical discharge after serving in Iraq.
Kim and Marlene weren't much use to him but he got the loan of a beach side apartment and $25,000 to help pay the bills, but he and his wife and kids looked a little nervous in their new surrounds.
Among the judges on Oprah's Big Give was Jamie Oliver, who is obviously going to be the best thing about this show. The British cook was always going to look like the proverbial fish out of water in the midst of the gushy Americans but halfway through I realised that there was something vital and missing from his delivery and patter. The F-word.
Well, you can't be having any of that on Oprah, can you.
At the end of the show, there was a segment called The Big Reveal, which sounds jarring to the ear, but it is the money shot when all the money is counted and everyone stands around as if they're a mini Telethon community as all the gifts are distributed.
The crowd cheers, the fundraisers high five each other and speak into microphones like old pros, while the recipient of all this largesse is wheeled out to tear up, weep and cry, and generally break down and sob some more.
People give spontaneous yelps from the crowd as if they've just had a religious conversion as they cheer and get off from all the giving that's going down.
And the really awful thing is that even though I'm hating this show, and as cross as two sticks with Oprah for all her emotional manipulation - and hoping like hell she makes up the difference to the poor people who got stuck with lousy fundraisers - I'm sitting there sniffling into my hanky too.
It's not a pretty sight.
*What did you think of Oprah's Big Give? Post your comments below.
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