Being dubbed a flop by the rest of the world, RI:SE is taking its revenge by speaking ill of it. First came the comprehensive failure of its debut last April, where by deciding to go for a “soft launch” the programme merely succeeded in providing no obvious reasons why all those who tuned in on the first day should ever watch it again. Each subsequent relaunch also failed by neglecting to demonstrate any immediate evidence of an improvement, and therefore left viewers feeling short-changed and insulted at being told there’d been a change when clearly the overhauls had proved nothing.

Now has come what you’d think – and hope – is the final throw of the dice. RI:SE has decided to stop regarding life as an uplifting brew of pastoral landscapes where technology harmonizes with nature and everyone’s so nice that there’ll even make cups of coffee for you. Instead the world is a place of freaks, of crazy character personalities both famous and infamous, and where the obvious meeting point of where-it’s-at cultures, lifestyles and fashions is on the top floor of Whiteley’s shopping centre in Bayswater. A shot of this location greeted viewers at the start of the first transmission from RI:SE‘s new home. Remote, grimy, and shrouded in the darkness of the pre-dawn, it was the last thing you wanted to see on a TV screen first thing in the morning.

Edith Bowman, the one survivor from last year led us rather self-consciously throughout the new set, and also behind the scenes, through the make-up suites, the green room, and even the production gallery. Not only did this feel rather desperate, as if to try and convince the viewer that RI:SE‘s credibility was somehow demonstrated by the number of corridors you had to walk down to get from hospitality to the studio, but it also displayed a rather half-arsed grasp of perception, as if we were supposed to be impressed with the fact that the programme’s shower facilities hadn’t been built yet.

In fact, the show’s entire new location failed to translate into anything endearing on screen. With its cavernous interiors, cold wooden floors and spiky furniture, the studio had an air of icy functionality. No feelings of warmth or welcome seemed to reach through the TV set and encourage you to feel accommodated, reassured, or safe amongst friends. Instead a horrible clinical, sterile fug emanated from the walls, which mixed with the ridiculously artificial and incredibly noisy “happenings” at the breakfast bar to create a very sickly confection. Just a quick glimpse of the set made this viewer feel almost tense and nervous, as if stumbling upon an overlit and ultra-shiny operating theatre, the purpose of which can only be guessed at from the presence of suspiciously gentle beeping and whirring machines. It’s the old fear of being taken in by appearances – that beneath the dazzle and veneer lurks something altogether more unpalatable, even sinister.

Cue Iain Lee. In almost any other context on any other channel you’d surely have considered him one of the last people most suited to pilot a live, daily breakfast programme. Cynical, unsympathetic, spiteful and something of a bully on camera, you’d have thought Lee’s previous TV performance militated wholly against the medium of early morning telly, where talking at rather than down to viewers is vital, and large doses of humility, sincerity and infectious enthusiasm are essential. But this is RI:SE, where the illogical and unfathomable run free, and where history has repeatedly suggested how neither Channel 4, Sky or Princess Productions seem able to learn that the very worst thing you can put on breakfast television is somebody who cannot help but appear to be obsessed solely and wholly with themselves.

Sure enough, all those familiar Iain Lee traits and foibles, honed with grisly precision on The Eleven O’clock Show, were in evidence again here, but writ large upon a canvas suffocating in its scope and pretension. So we had the assumption that not one second of airtime must pass without it being filled with the sound of his voice (“Make yourself, er, comfortable because I’ll be back in, erm, a bit for a bit more … “); a predilection for scoring points off his fellow presenters; and above all the preposterous presumption that the practice of substituting calculated offensiveness for telling proper jokes is laudable and hilarious.

None of this came as much of a surprise given Lee’s track record, but was all the more objectionable for appearing to be so more blatant and unrestrained. RI:SE‘s format, which has always been fatally locked into the performance of its presenters, has now given Lee permission to exercise his base prejudices to their limit, and in turn exorcise charm and respect from any scene in which he appears. Moreover, by appearing to dominate every shot he is in, and refuse to concede any limelight to his peers, Lee is equating the programme, its identity and tone and aspiration, wholly with himself and no-one else. It’s now Iain Lee’s RI:SE, in other words, and you must watch and experience the programme on nobody else’s terms but his.

Of course it’s not just the presenters and set that have been changed for this new model RI:SE; the running order itself has had a complete overhaul. Sadly, however, this latest incarnation failed to offer up yet again any distinctive elements to generate enough buzz to make it a programme that demands to be watched. There was also nothing here which other shows and channels had already done, which isn’t itself unusual, except RI:SE singularly failed to do any of them any better, and all of them far worse.

The news bulletins were isolated completely from the rest of the show, and delivered by an anonymous woman simply called Zora, who looked as if she was reading a poison pen letter on her autocue rather than the headlines. These updates were so marginalized as to lose all significance and perhaps by design were immediately forgettable. That staple of breakfast programming, the paper review, has become a premier feature to a greater degree than even The Big Breakfast attempted during its later lamentable years. It was even rolled out in two sections, both as tedious as each other. The first came replete with its own “host” who simply handed the newspapers to Iain Lee who then read out headlines and went, “Oh, really” or, “And why not?” repeatedly. The second found Iain and Edith at a table, again looking at the headlines, but this time Iain went, “This is fantastic.” We can do this sort of thing at home, and probably have 20 times more fun into the bargain.

There was also an OB outside the shopping centre that involved a bloke interviewing, of all people, a flower seller. “Iain’s Top Five” was a Letterman-esque rundown of five topical words which were themselves supposedly to be inherently funny, but somehow were not. Guests dressed the set in the same way as the anonymous crowd of twentysomethings at the breakfast bar, sipping cappuccinos and talking way too loudly to each other. Never mind the way this screwed up the sound levels for the entire show, it was a device totally ill-suited to TV at this time of day, being simultaneously exasperating and soporific; plus the way the camera kept randomly cutting away to a long shot of the bar, i.e. an assortment of unknown heads, assumed we cared about these strangers. Finally there was the simply rank “Textecution” game, which took an age to explain, even longer to conclude, and which by inviting viewers to text in the name of one of five contestants they disliked traded in the lowest of all emotions: hatred.

The last half hour, hosted independently by Mel Geidroyc and Sue Perkins, was an improvement, but only truthfully by way of being more focused and organized. The pair’s self-conscious patter, endless courting of the frivolous, plus their melodramatic matronly turns of phrase exhibit their professionalism, sure, but also the fact that they’re doing exactly the same act they did five years ago, only less convincingly and without the subtlety. Quite why they’ve felt it necessary to let themselves be seen as reluctant saviours of such an unsalvageable wreck of a programme is a crying shame.

It’s difficult to get truly angry about a programme like RI:SE anymore. Instead, with the show continuing to resemble such a vapid, soulless product, anger gives way to a more potent yet equally pronounced sadness. How can failure exist, and continue to exist, on such a grand scale? It’s then you notice that the centrepiece of RI:SE‘s set comprises two chairs positioned in front of a French window – the arrangement pioneered by The Big Breakfast, and to which that programme always ended up returning after each of its bungled attempts at a relaunch – and you cannot help but conclude that the excitement, innovation and wonder that have characterized the bulk of breakfast television’s 20 years on air seem to have been snuffed out for good.

Generally in TV, if you’ve got a clunker of a show, the whole nation knows about it and are ready to mock accordingly. Even Fame Academy, while having seemingly everyone admitting by the final that it was their secret love, only managed figures for the final that equalled those of the much-mocked first series of Survivor. What chance RI:SE, a show which started and, brief doubling due to exclusive Big Brother coverage aside, remains at 200,000 viewers has of improving its image is negligible.

Three editors, five lost presenters and eight months ago, Ian Jones concluded of the first show that it “trades on the maxim ‘safety first’ – truly the very worst aspiration for Channel 4 to peddle.” Rather than as a damning review, you might be forgiven for thinking the producers had taken this as a maxim to guide the show by – bizarrely, and almost certainly uniquely, this was a last show of the year that felt like every other show, the only nods to the festive season being a joke shop singing moose on the still overlarge presenters’ desk and snow effects on the big screens. With the only other guest Grant Bovey, currently doing the rounds promoting this Christmas’ Celebrity Boxing, dispatched within the first half-hour, that left the big guests as being Girls Aloud and One True Voice, constantly talked up as the biggest musical conflict in years (“I think you’ll be able to taste the excitement … you can cut the tension with a knife in the studio”), when they’ve done at least two previous mutual joint interviews and the supposed acrimony amounted to artificial playground insults, and those probably suggested by their managers. If the presentation of the two bands as warring pop factions was one big exercise in irony, it was very subtly done in universally broad strokes. When one emailer asked if the boys would regret being put together by reality TV, one almost mumbled “no, because, y’know, Daniel’s a good songwriter”, as if surprised by a possibly critical question. Notably, while One True Voice were cut off by adverts, the girls were allowed to complete their song and a few minutes later disappear without prior warning on motorbikes to their undisclosed next port of call. It may look good in the Bizarre column, but to the viewer it smacks of record company-aided laziness. Just because you tell people something is exciting doesn’t necessarily mean it actually is, a seemingly clichéd observation that the show should have taken on board long before now.

So what of the presenters, the facet that has come in for the most criticism? When the show started, Henry Bonsu and Colin Murray were talked up as the news specialists – both are music radio DJs – while Edith Bowman and Liz Bonnin were the entertainment reporters. Bonsu disappeared a few weeks in and Murray left in October as the news mandate that suggested that, unlike its predecessor, a massive news story need not mean the show be postponed, evaporated. Durden-Smith maintains what Ian described as “deliberately trying to contrive a personality, any personality”, often pointlessly shouting and at one point sitting on the aforementioned moose in a vain and frankly David Brent-esque attempt to be “wacky”. Bowman and Bonnin, meanwhile, are cast as a Trinny and Susannah for Heat obsessives, delivering on-tap supposed sarcasm at the drop of a script. But isn’t this all a false economy? I’ve never seen Bonnin before she started on the show, but as far as I can tell neither Durden-Smith nor Bowman had adoped these personalities in their respective presenting styles before. It’s as if the production team had heard second-hand about the balance of power between presenters and regulars on the Big Breakfast and tried to recreate what they imagined it was like. But Bowman was wearing a hat, so she must be stylish and with the times.

Worse was to come. For a last show before Christmas, you expect all manner of bells and whistles, presenter surprises and montages of the year’s guests and highlights. What you don’t expect is, after two hours of unfestive ennui, a last link in which Edith and Liz tried to give thanks for celebrities who had sent them Christmas cards while One True Voice blew party horns and attempted to shout jokes about how they would be travelling to their remaining publicity duties and an unexplained dog set about the moose – that’s the Christmas effects budget gone, then – before a half drowned out Mark bade “a big thank-you to all our co-presenters and to the world in general” before playing out with the same film of celebrities (Sandy from Big Brother!) singing Shakin’ Stevens’ Merry Christmas Everyone that had been played an hour previously. And a happy christmas to you too, Princess Productions. The only semblance of an off-autocue surprise in the whole show was when one of Blue was shown on tape declaring he fancied Bonnin, which she pretended to be flustered by while Mark laddishly suggested “give him a ring, see what happens.”

The very least you expect of a show that has been universally panned in its opening weeks is some sort of noticeable improvement with metaphorical fireworks and, especially in the competitive breakfast market, something to hang the show’s hook on that is distinct and eye-catching enough to win over viewers. Yet eight months on, all that’s really changed on face value is the dropping of the news ticker some time in July. News and sport look more contractually obliged than ever, Chris Rogers and Kirsty Gallagher never gaining so much as a reference outside their specialist spheres for all their mugging to camera and the sport competition question being to name the player Sophie Anderton is currently dating, while the facile quarter-hour entertainment bulletins are built up like a major item. The rest boils down to the same promotional interviews as everyone else, right down to the lines of questioning, conducted by presenters seemingly keen not to project any of their own personalities beyond what was said in the production meeting. What’s the point, especially on the nominally get up and go Channel 4, of following everyone else’s example, and the lowest common denominator thereof to boot? The Big Breakfast may not on paper have been much more, but at its height, a time which should not be confused with its dying days, the array of experts and features was unmissable viewing. The concept of including “watercooler moments” may be the dread of the discerning viewer, but RI:SE would be advised to include some, otherwise it boils down to a completely forgettable set of features day after day.

RI:SE relocates in the New Year, losing Chris, Kirsty and Liz, not that they were given proper farewells during their last show, and moving to a purpose-built studio inside a shopping centre, a move which you suspect the production crew came up with as a homage to This Morning on Albert Dock or even GMTV‘s Get Up and Give campaign specials, but is actually reminiscent of the predecessor’s ill-fated relaunch with Sharron Davies and Rick Adams. The other sports anchor Helen Chamberlain, also a former Big Breakfast stand-in supposedly at Johnny Vaughan’s behest, has presented three shows during the last week and equipped herself relatively well, but it’s worth remembering that she was a launch presenter of Channel 5′s Live and Dangerous five and a half years ago and quit after six weeks because she was missing Soccer AM so much. Imagine what sport the tabloids would have if that were repeated. More than a change of personnel, however, RI:SE desperately needs a complete shift in direction, something unlikely to happen with a new editor coming in from a showbiz background that threatens to take the show even further down the faux-cynicism route. “Maybe subsequent revamps will leaven the show with traces of distinction and worth” Ian concluded back on 20 April – it’s looking increasingly unlikely.

With the weight of history hanging on his eyelids, the fact that Mark Durden-Smith had obviously enjoyed one hell of a good night’s sleep didn’t bode well. We first saw the louche, preening Son-of-Chalmers a couple of minutes before 7am. Gargantuan shirt-collar unfurled, he self-consciously limbered up as if about to attempt a gruelling half-marathon, then summoned up every gram of nervous energy and tension in his body to make sure his opening comments were as offhand and meaningless as possible. Welcome to RI:SE, where the (albeit confusing) remarks of an anonymous dutiful continuity announcer (“A brand new way to wake with Channel 4″) catch the moment and the memory more than its chief presenter.

Indeed, as one of those necessarily chapter-opening occasions in TV history, the first few minutes of what needed to be a high profile and captivating invitation to stay tuned was a shock – not because of its immediacy or audacity, but thanks to its flippant, business-as-usual, aloof tone. Launches are supposed to be stunning over-the-top affairs, demanding to be watched. This lot didn’t give a damn. They were even talking amongst themselves when the cameras went live. A grey-haired figure was seen remonstrating in a suit. The floor manager – for it was he – then scurried out of sight, already fleeing the scene of the crime. It was telling that someone then deemed it vital to begin with a list of what RI:SE was not, rather than what it was. “There are no puppets, dancing girls or whooping crew members,” slurred Mark. Only then came the “RI:SE promise”, as (sounding like an insurance claims strapline) Mark declared: “We’ll give you all you need to know about everyone you care about in just 30 minutes.”

This would turn out to prove truer than feared. Towards the end of its maimed existence The Big Breakfast took to repeating and recycling features at a giddy and shameless rate. RI:SE, however, kicked off even more brazen, unfolding in 30-minute chunks virtually identical in content. It was down to the “team”, presumably, to provide variation. Initially at least it was possible to feel a bit of intrigue and bemusement at working out the weird mechanics of this new show, and more crucially who did what. Mark was flanked by three other people. First was Kirsty Gallacher, who fronted the sports news and arrived replete with a comedy ailment for Mark to take the piss out of (it even had a description – “nodules” – ripe for barrel-scraping smut. Mark did not disappoint.) Then there was Edith Bowman, who was in charge of film and music news. Completing the quartet, and instantly the most irritating of all, was Colin Murray, a supporting player with no obvious function other than being Mark’s stooge and to ask questions of the others that revealed his own insipid personal obsessions.

Alternately snuggled together on high chairs or behind a large desk, the four attempted to host each and every feature collectively, a strategy that boiled down to ceaseless chatting, gossiping and interrupting each other in as imprecise and drowsy a manner as possible, while ignoring the viewers completely. This summoned up all-too ghastly and prescient images of similar dire chatabouts Five’s Company and, worse, Granada Television’s truly awful Loose Women. In this instance, the struggle for a “casual” or laidback approach merely resulted in highhanded snootiness. In fact the presenters’ efforts to fulfil this ambitious brief made their conversations all the more mannered and exaggerated – “You’ve got a crumb on your face” marking a new low in presenter continuity. Throughout the entire show no attention or respect was paid to the viewers; the team were far too busy talking to each other, joylessly. No amount of theorising and explanation can overlook the fact that this kind of behaviour on television is and always will be simply downright rude.

Each of the team had also been assigned their own vibrating messenger to pick up e-mails sent directly from the viewers. This sounded quite appealing – as an opportunity for, just say, making a complaint – presuming you could be bothered to get out of bed or interrupt your breakfast, go and switch on your computer, dial-up, compose and type the e-mail, then wait for the thing to be read out. It somehow felt undignified expending so much energy on such a task.

Chris Rogers, however, had no e-mail address. He wasn’t allowed to sit or mingle with the famous four either, as if to emphasise his separate, and also by all accounts miniscule and unflattering role, of reading out a “six pack” of news every half hour. This was the powdery backbone of RI:SE: a two-minute dash through half a dozen top stories spliced with melodramatic sounds and images. News presentation that prioritises fast cutting and a breathless delivery can be entertaining and effective if confidently and amusingly executed (seeNewsround to MTV to Radio 1′s Newsbeat). That, sadly, was not the case here. Rogers seemed red-faced and ill at ease; his links back to the team clumsy and contrived. He needed to be more involved and made more welcome – on everyone’s part.

His role was further undermined by the presence of a “news ticker”. This distant cousin of the “infobar” of L!ve TV began as a distraction, then an irritation, and finally a real pain giving this reviewer a killing headache. Its gaudy yellow background didn’t help; plus it concentrated on “stories” that weren’t picked up on in the main news bulletin, and which consequently seemed to just call more awkward attention to themselves. Still, the team ignored it completely, like everything else.

With hard news relegated to the half hour, the bits in-between were where the real personality and purpose of RI:SE should have been defined and sustained. Instead, perhaps because the show really didn’t aspire to anything significant, nothing was resolved or exposed, won or lost. With compound irritation, items shuffled into line, passed into view, disappeared for a bit, then idled by once more, Mark and co fatuously greeting each as if an indefatigable ultra-wealthy dowager had just entered. The chief feature – stills of a new David Beckham photo shoot – enabled Mark to further carve out his macho niche and challenge the others to respond or “shut up – I’m talking”. He led the charge in bouncing himself and his colleagues into definable caricatures, while if there was ever supposed to be a parity between them all – or even the pretence of one – Mark’s despatching of Colin to go and make the coffee made clear what the power structure was here and how that was never ever going to change. If the man were obviously or naturally likable then this wouldn’t have mattered as much; conversely it seemed as if Mark was deliberately trying to contrive a personality, any personality, to raise him above the others and make sure he wouldn’t be the first against the wall when the relaunch comes.

And so the Beckham feature was flogged over and over again, and no matter how many times a camera jumps angles there’s only so long you can make the act of staring at a photo stuck on a piece of card different from riding on the roof of a plague-stricken train. “Do our work for us,” the team appeared to be urging as they plugged the e-mail addresses for the 10th time. “Lip Service”, an item that deciphered what celebrities whispered to each other at public events, was straight out of Steve Wright People Show/Last Chance Lottery wilderness territory, and while diverting the first time round was downright offensive the fourth. Those unused to Sky Sports’ technical presentation of sporting coverage, meanwhile, would have found the almost operatic promotion of the night’s big Premiership game totally at odds with Kirsty’s wish to “get rid of the cheese.” The lowest point of all however came going into the commercial breaks, when footage of traffic building up on the M27 was soundtracked by the new single from Eminem – “A combination never before seen,” and hopefully never again.

It seemed something of an oversight to not even have a big-name guest on the first morning; instead it was Dennis Leary, who Edith tried to interview (“Comedy legend – I don’t know about that.” “Well, that’s what it says in the script …”) while fidgeting. Dennis was served coffee and tersely complained several times of how there were, “People running around the set here” – a reminder of how such hyperactivity was supposed to now be a thing of the past on Channel 4 breakfast telly, never mind the nasty habit of shouting across the studio floor.

Mark’s stew of sophistry embraced slack-jawed gurning at the latest from the Middle East (“The main story you’re waking up to this morning” is how he continued to trail it, a sentence that makes no sense even written down), speaking with his mouth full, and musing on Kylie Minogue, who’s “worried about losing her voice – surely that doesn’t matter; if she loses her bottom then we’ve got a problem.” The only decent phrase to fall from his mouth was the welcome order: “Colin, can you please be quiet.” By the time the two hours were up, Colin’s role had been confirmed as utterly superfluous, his contributions instantly forgettable, his presence virtually untraceable. He had been set-up as the joker and the imp, only to go scurrying off to make refreshments. He couldn’t even feed gags to Mark properly. He will be the first to go.

It seemed Sebastian Scott couldn’t resist the opportunity of getting his new baby to take a few smug, lazy pot-shots at the opposition; and so RI:SE ended with clips from that morning’s editions of GMTV and BBC Breakfast, which were obviously only ever going to be the dullest, clumsiest, gaffe-prone bits they could find. The team bowed out telling us what they would be doing later on – self-obsessed and trifling to the end. There were no closing credits or title music; just complete silence, like they were already in mourning.

It’s vital to recall just how extremely bad The Big Breakfast had become on the point of its execution, and how it’s tempting to acknowledge that virtually any kind of replacement would have been some kind of improvement. But that replacement needed be something that instantly blew away all memory of its predecessor’s terrible death. RI:SE needed to sum up everything about Channel 4 in the 21st century, just as The Big Breakfast (at its inception) did about the end of the 20th. Off the evidence of its debut, though, it will only ever feature people of no substance saying nothing of consequence. That familiar, predictable news/weather/sports/ entertainment menu is still perfectly catered for on the BBC and GMTV. Even its grand antecedent, The Channel Four Daily, was more attractive, its novelty value hooking you day in day out. Maybe subsequent revamps will leaven the show with traces of distinction and worth; history suggests as much, though not without controversy and much contention over just exactly what the history of breakfast TV qualifies as “success” and “failure”. For the time being, RI:SE trades on the maxim “safety first” – truly the very worst aspiration for Channel 4 to peddle.