S***wrecked (Shipwrecked)

Member Name: flowermouth

Product:	Shipwrecked
Date:	08/03/01 (270 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Mind-numbing

Disadvantages: Mind-numbing

Channel Four’s ‘Shipwrecked’ has at last finished. Unfortunately, not for good as a new series is being planned. Why?

For those of you not familiar with the series, allow me to elaborate: After a rigorous elimination process to discover a group of appropriate youths that are bound not to get along, they are then sent to a tropical island to be ‘shipwrecked.’ Only they are not shipwrecked in the traditional sense as they have a film crew following their every move.

As one of the ‘Shipwrecked’ cast pointed out, the only Australian male, Dee, ‘Imagine being shipwrecked with the most boring people on the planet’. Spot on there. Every week we watched as they complained about eating rice, having to put up with the rain, each other and not being at home. Well, what did they expect? An 18-bedroom apartment with SKY TV and Internet access?

What was lacking from these poor excuses of Robinson Crusoes was a sense of adventure. They had too many comforts as it was. They should have arrived on the island with nothing except a camera and a supply of batteries and tapes. By having the film crew present throughout the entire series it hindered the notion of being shipwrecked. Every time one of them went swimming the camera would cut to am underwater shot of them gliding through the water, oh yes, very fly on the wall. Even when some of the male cast swam to the other island, the viewers were greeted with shots of them arriving on the next island’s beach. Anyone with half a brain cell thought ‘Well, how spontaneous is this programme? There are so many prepared shots that it could be storyboarded!’ I strongly believe that the entire programme is a set-up. The producers obviously chose quite weak-minded individuals so they could be coaxed into doing anything for the cameras.

Let’s not be fooled too much by television, as we all know, nothing in the medi
a is real. Even if it appears real, it does so because it has been designed to look that way. So, to any would-be-television-producers out there: If you are going to design a television programme to look real, then please do not follow ‘Shipwrecked’ as an example. Despite popular belief, many contemporary television audiences have a brain and can spot a fake a mile off.

Summary: