Is it possible to die of embarrassment? If so, I fear for my health. For Posh's sake, I hope that the tape of the hour-long 'documentary' Victoria Beckham; Coming to America, which aired on American television last night and reaches UK screens tonight, is placed into a deep, dark TV basement and never allowed to be aired again.

Someone appears to have advised Posh that what Americans really want, what they've really been dying for, is another Paris Hilton, complete with the tired Parisian repertoire of endless primping, careless driving, and solipsistic bragging. The only difference being that in America, Posh isn't famous for being famous. She's famous for not being famous, which somehow makes everything so much more excruciating. Even her catchphrase feels Parisian: "That's major," she keeps deadpanning. A major mistake.

I suspect the decision to make this show a copy of Hilton's The Simple Life was made before Paris was thrown in jail, much to the overwhelming pleasure of the American people, resulting in the hotel heiress's current 'post-dumb' period.

America's 'serious' critics, have already taken their literary baseball bats to Posh's television show, with Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times describing Posh as the product of "a nation so open to media hypnosis that a website devoted to the ripening of a 44-pound wheel of cheddar has received more than a million Internet hits". Ooh, that hurts.

Regardless, the set-ups are all exhaustingly familar: so far in the show, we have met Posh's hair and make-up people (her best friends, we are told) and watched her conduct a poolside interview with a potential assistant ("She can't be too good looking, she can't be too thin, it's all about me," Posh grumps, probably breaking every Californian employment law in the book). In the meantime, Posh started to talk about herself in the third person ("Posh can open doors too," she declares, tottering over to greet a visitor to her rented house).

In a way, I'm glad it all looks so contrived - it gives Posh a way of distancing herself from it. Nevertheless, this project was incredibly ill-conceived. As half-time approaches, we join Posh at the Department of Motor Vehicles, where she tells a African American man, probably earning close to minimum wage, that she owns a convertible Bentley. Bloodcurdling.

After a miserable first half, things started to improve, but not much. There was no honesty in this show, just contrived scene after contrived scene: an earthquake tutorial, a Beverly Hills lunch at a predictably gaudy Beverly Hills mansion filled with predictably freaky-looking Beverly Hills people.

But when she stopped playing dumb and bragging about her Bentley, Posh was a surprisingly likeable presence. The closest the show got to sincerity was when she met the celebrity blogger Perez Hilton at an LA coffee shop.

"I think I may have called you an alien," admitted Perez, who doesn't exactly look terrestrial himself, "or a robot with really big boobs." He offered her a cookie.

"I can't be seen to actually eat," countered Posh, stating the number one rule for any celebrity followed by the paparazzi. (An eating picture can always be turned into a 'weight' story and, as a general rule, people look most undignified when they're eating.)

The American television network NBC has invested big money in this hokum. Its celebrity news show, Access Hollywood, had already run two segments on the Beckhams in anticipation of the hour-long 'documentary' - and with exposure like that, the $250 million thrown around by LA Galaxy begins to look a bit less insane. A bit. After all, competitive hot dog eating gets more ratings on American TV than 'soccer'.

Will Posh's debut be enough to keep Americans tuning in? NBC originally planned the show to be a multi-part series but scaled it back at the last moment to just one-hour, while promising extra material if there's enough demand. That doesn't exactly show much confidence.

The critics may be wrong and the ratings will be the final judge - but the only way I can see this show making it to a second episode is if the Beckhams manage to talk their friend Tom Cruise into appearing in it. "I know a bit about Scientology," Posh told Perez, "but he's never tried to convert me. You'd like him." Or perhaps the show could have a future if Posh stops acting like Paris Hilton and finds her own personality.

This happened only once during the hour, when Perez asked Posh if there were any celebrities she didn't like. "Eddie Murphy," she replies. "Beverly Hills C***" Now that's more like it.

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