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Are people we sort-of know, who are used to being on camera, inherently less interesting to watch and talk about than a bunch of total strangers?
Not necessarily, but I do think that they're far more likely to be guarded - or, rather, comfortably guarded, as opposed to paranoid - and playing to the cameras. And it's not just people who've made their names by appearing on television regularly (if not exactly recently) - JSP, for one, has been intimately involved with creating shows and so knows precisely how television works.
We expect them to behave a certain way and, by and large, they do. My dead granny could have predicted that John Lydon would get booted last time around. Is it likely that the show will descend into chaos the way that the last series of 4's equivalent did, or that there'll be anything approaching spontaneity, deviation from the script? With television semi-regulars, not really. You've also got none of the attraction of getting to see new cultural icons - probably undeserving, definitely temporary, but new all the same - in the making.
I think the appeal lies elsewhere. It's a show built around spite. See people you already know that you hate being forced to eat maggots. Laugh at the human cartoon that is Peter Andre. Will Natalie Appleton get her tits out? Stay tuned for part three. Phone 0800 345 234 now if you want to see Joe Pasquale - funny man, squeaky voice, soon to appear in Carry On Stereotyping - have a bath in elephant shit.
In that sense it's what the last series of Big Brother wanted to be, only with faded stars desperate to get off the panto circuit, rather than unknown [scare quotes]characters[/scare quotes] desperate to get onto it. And maybe it is partly to do with the different series lengths, but Big Brother manages to become more than just spiteful viewing despite itself, because the longer it drags on the better you get to know the people in the house. That may be because their growing familiarity with each other and their surroundings makes them ease up and drop the act in a way that a two week stint can't, but it may equally be because they simply don't feel the need to be 'on' all the time.
I mean, they're known as 'reality shows' but they're not trying to represent 'everyday British reality' in any way, nor - or so I thought - would anyone expect or want them to.
No, but the point I'm trying to make is that, at the most basic level, Big Brother roots itself in something recognisable to the majority of the audience as a regular way of life - sharing a house with people who start of as strangers then gradually get to know each other better, fighting for the bathroom first thing in the morning, arguing over who washes the dishes and who dries them, telling each other to shut up because they're trying to get some sleep, getting annoyed with X because ze's left a load of pubes in the bath again.
This is, I think, the main thing that I'm trying to get at - that with Big Brother the audience are given an entry point to the situation, a way of imagining themselves in it, and it becomes more than just a contest as a result. Celebrity contains the double barrier of an exotic location and famous faces (Celebrity Big Brother, on the other hand, managed to balance the elements out in a way that ITV's ratings-guzzler quite simply can't).
Incidentally, yeah, I qould quite like to see Channel 4 drop the more extreme game show elements (the Noel's House Party cast-offs that they filled a lot of the end of the last series with). I like my voyeurism a little less forced. |
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