Probably THE Best Programme Ever.... (Big Brother (TV Series))

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Big Brother (TV Series)
Date:	31/05/05 (1098 review reads)
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…or maybe not.

Is it really that time again? After 5 previous outings, Big Brother returns for series 6. Since inception in the land of dikes and windmills, BB has spawned copy cat series around the world, nearly all bordering on soft-core pornography what with all the sexual deviants thrown together to keep the viewing public tuned in.

If by some miracle you’ve managed to avoid the hype, broadly speaking a generic mix of a dozen or so people are brought together for a few weeks to live in a house. Not any house, mind you, this house has hidden cameras and microphones all over the shop to view and record every movement and sound that the housemates make. As the weeks go by housemates are voted out by the viewing public, which is where the programme makers generate a lot of their revenue i.e. from the telephone income of those choosing to phone or text their votes. Endemol do also make money by links with such fine institutions as The Sun and The News of the World as well as generating advertising income for Channel 4. As you can see, the cash till soon starts to ring as soon as a new series hits the airwaves *kerching*

Series 6 looks like being a hit already. With 7 million viewers on opening night, figures are up on series 5 whilst competition like “Celebrity Love Island” can only manage 2.2 million viewers on the same evening.

So why do folks watch this stuff? Well, you have to hand it to the makers, the choice of contestants is usually bizarre to say the least. In the case of series 6 we have:

White witch, Mary O’Leary who has already formed an alliance with the garden gnomes. Taking pity on them for their poor treatment at the hands of others, Mary feels that a gnome land community would be a cool place to be. Hmmmmm….

Lesley Sanderson has already whipped ‘em out in the pool. Clearly not the shy and retiring type, she does look like the kinda gal to be out and about drinking 10 pints with the ladettes on a Friday night. Going on to snog other contestants Vanessa Leyton-McIntosh and the dancer, Anthony Hutton, it looks like Lesley is up for anything. Unfortunately, it also looks as though there’s a queue of people waiting to slag her off now that she’s on TV if last week’s News of the World is anything to go by.

Sam Heuston looks like the lad’s choice. A self-proclaimed sex-addict, her sex life has been plastered all over the News of the World too (in which case, it just has to be true). Yessiree, she’s already done the deed in a cable car, had more than just a flambé with Aaron Siwoku from Hell’s Kitchen fame and romped on a Spanish balcony wearing next to nothing. With a CV like that she could be up for the porno version of the next Carry On movie.

So who else is featuring? There’s Italian, ex-para, Roberto who likes the look of himself; Makosi the Whitney Houston wannabe who is an early riser; Sri-lankan Saskia and Kemal, the well-spoken Tory, transvestite belly dancer…and …oh I’m losing the will to live as I write this.

This series of BB promises to make life more uncomfortable then ever before with glass partitions between rooms, less space for the housemates to avoid each other in and all the usual distractions from Big Brother itself, no doubt including obscure challenges and interruptions. Oh yeah, the ultimate winner wins £70000 although this pales into insignificance compared to the media cash-ins that come their way after the show has finished.

Like any media circus, stars are born from nothing. In the case of BB, the diminutive Davina McCall has done her career no harm at all by being present at evictions, encouraging the banner carrying hordes to support their favourite loon and coming up with incisive interviews of the most recent evictee. Yep, questions like “Well what was it like in there?” and “How did you get on with so and so?” go to make Jeremy Paxton look like the intellectual equivalent of an amoeba with a brain cell missing.

Perhaps the most curious aspect of all is the elevation to stardom of people that have done…erm..precisely nothing. It’s a strange mirror image of our insatiable desire to crave insider knowledge on those we consider famous. Magazines like “OK” live on the back of photographing those the public would like to see more of. People like the Beckhams behind closed doors and yet, in the case of BB, folks like Jade Goody can join this elite group of “stars” that we are only too willing to part with our cash for to see them “at home”. The greatest irony is that they are good at…well…erm..precisely nothing apart from having appeared in Big Brother. I mean, Jade Goody was a dental receptionist with a big gob and now she’s a minor celebrity with a big gob. Here again, we’re back to that ultra sense of voyeurism that seems to dominate our lives and make us more curious than a cat on its ninth life.

A concept like Big Brother simply lends itself to the world of the Internet. A quick visit to http://www.channel4.com/bigbrother/ will give you all the detail you want with profiles of the latest housemates, video clips of the best..erm..action and lots of mobile phone promotion especially as the latest series is being sponsored by Carphone Warehouse *kerching*

It’s hard to ever see a time when there won’t be a fly-on-the-wall, voyeuristic programme of some kind that will feature to titillate our sense of wanting to spy on someone else. Big Brother strips this back to the barest of essentials to take ordinary (but strange folk) and ritualistically humiliating them for the public’s viewing pleasure. I can foresee Big Brother or something like it always being around. Jeeeeeez…thank God for remote controls ;o)

Thanks for reading. I’m on hols this week so may well be working on opinion 200. Hooray for me so thanks again for all the reads!

Marandina

Big Brother is currently showing on Channel 4 with ongoing coverage throughout the day on E4

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