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What you are describing is brain dead TV for the terminally brain dead - so no change there then. Reality TV is not a gendre is is lazy thinking by the creative people. They can't be arsed to do anything like drama so why not just film 'paint drying' - that would arguably be more culturally interesting!

Reality TV is the triumph of the most expensive technology over story telling. The technology consumes most of the production cost whilst the script writing, set dressing, costume design are free. The balance is all wrong. I have always believed that people like to be told stories that have a begging, middle and end. That is a structure. Structure is artificially achieved in reality TV mainly by the excess use of technology - what is needed is more scripted drama NOT more reality TV. Bring back scriptwriters, sets and set designers, costumes and costume designers and put the technology back into the cupboard where it belongs!

So everyones forgotten The bbcs Paddington Green, then.

The problem with genuine "reality" TV is that these days everyone is rather knowing, they are aware they are on TV and therefore behave with that fact in mind. Having said that such programmes as "The Family" came close to reflecting genuine lives, though even then there was a degree of "playing to the cameras".
I must admit I have never watched "Big Brother" or it's various spin-offs, but I fail to see why talent shows have mysteriously become "reality" shows, either of Cowell's efforts or the various dancing/singing programmes are just 'Opportunity Knocks' and 'New Faces' with a glossy cover and a bigger budget.
I agree with John from Hendon, more proper dramas, I'd rather watch a drama I don't like than the mindless dross of amateur night and the 'Dog & Dock' transported to a big stage.

SSSSCCCCRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPE!!!!!

(That was the sound coming from the bottom of the barrel)

That sounds mind numbingly awful, in addition to just being cheap TV, where the programme makers won't even pay the "stars".....looks like I'll be spending more money on dvd's

I think they should document the movements of the commenters on here. Personally I'd be fascinated to watch the lives of these astonishing oracles who have already made their minds up before even viewing a second of the programme.

Its so much easier to have an a priori opinion than to have to judge everything on its own merits, isn't it?

This is not an new idea but it's quite an interesting one. As wales_wails says - Paddington Green was a similar experiment and some years ago what I recall as a nightly programme on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳2 after Newsnight following a similar cast of eccentrics around Soho at night. Does anyone else remember that? It was gripping!

A real life version of Private Eye cartoon It's Grim Up North London. Can't wait. Tune in next time to see which improbably expensive, achingly hip and convoluted coffee Tarquin buys for his breakfast. Come on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ enough lazy crowd pleasing, let's have Strictly Sacked from the Fall or a year in the life of Mark E Smith. Challenging-uh.

@6

I'd rather see an insightful documentary into the motivations of sanctimonious concern trolls.

More cheap TV.
Though this does seem to concur with the definition of "reality". Most "reality" TV shows are far removed from that (at least I hope they are).
But reality can be boring.
So - cheap, and boring.

So the producers managed to get ALL THE WAY TO NOTTING HILL? Well done!

Chris, Leeds.

Hairdresser John is a legend. I will never forget a comment he made to me about his non-meat eating friend who had just left the shop. 'He calls himself a vegetarian,vegetable more like." Miaow. Onion has to be the grumpiest dog in the universe. So Stephen Lambert wants to paint a picture, do a big jigsaw, whatever, in his dotage. I think the approach is a natural progression but I wish he'd picked a new community rather than an artificial rich media infested ghetto. Still suppose it appeals to the ageing media literate Channel 4 demographic blah blah.

Will it last longer than the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Scotland legally stopped recent effort The Scheme, set in a housing estate in Kilmarnock.

I'll be honest, I bet the 2 episodes of the Scheme are far better than anything this Channel 4 effort turns out.

For post# 7 vitruvius55

I do remember that show Soho Nights although I think it was late night on ITV. I think there was a wannabe actress, a coffe shop owner, a journalist and a few others. This new show sounds almost exactly the same. However I didn't find the original show 'gripping' nor did many others I assume given its timeslot and peoples lack of awareness.

As with previous posters, I would very much question the use of the word "reality". This reminds me of the US programme "The Hills" which is in some ways a work of genious, but surely you have to be a 13 year old girl (or boy!) to think for a moment that is in any way real, surely?

It is well known scientific tenet, that in simply making an observation that which is obvserved is affected. But at least with Big Brother (loathsome as it was) it could be accepted that being in a house with a dozen or so strangers, with every act sctrutinised by cameras, was a new "reality" for the contestants. It was not, of course, "real life".

But in order to succeed, the new Channel 4 reality show needs to demonstrate that what it is showing is "real-life", which I predict it fail to do miserably. I think it will flop badly. It goes without saying that I have absolutley no interest in the series whatsoever.

As with previous posters, I would very much question the use of the word "reality". This reminds me of the US programme "The Hills" which is in some ways a work of genious, but surely you have to be a 13 year old girl (or boy!) to think for a moment that is in any way real, surely?

It is well known scientific tenet, that in simply making an observation that which is obvserved is affected. But at least with Big Brother (loathsome as it was) it could be accepted that being in a house with a dozen or so strangers, with every act sctrutinised by cameras, was a new "reality" for the contestants. It was not, of course, "real life".

But in order to succeed, the new Channel 4 reality show needs to demonstrate that what it is showing is "real-life", which I predict it fail to do miserably. I think it will flop badly. It goes without saying that I have absolutley no interest in the series whatsoever.

What was it that John Grierson said, that the documentary at its best offered a "window onto the world"? What seems to have happened in the last ten years is the rise of a rather limited sub-genre, which offers a window onto nothing more than your neighbour's window...

Hmmm yes, I see how this programme would appeal to me, being from the North and now living in Nottingham.

The future of reality tv is with the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳. Once the cast's seemingly endless legal battles are over, The Scheme will define the decade.

This could potentially be interesting but only if it is genuine people who happen to be interesting as in the previously mentioned Paddington Green series. (Is that wig shop still going?) If it is just a load of Notting Hill fashionistas, it will be dire. I should know, I live there.

oh dear, someone has read 21st Century Blues and claimed their idea as original.

Steve Walkers amazing comedy series and even funnier book introduced us to the Everyone Channel, a television channel (or perhaps 100 million channels) that covered the lives of everyone, 24 hours a day. The joke was that in reality all that you watched was everyone else watching the channel too.

This book was published in 1994 and predicted reality TV - you see, all ideas are old ideas.

Yet more TV for those dead from the neck up.
Dress it up & call it a social experiment all you want, but its pointless.
Its as bad as the discovery & history channels. We get it, Hitler was bad, now move on please!!!!!

In what POSSIBLE sense could the pathetic freak show Big Brother be called decade defining?

Only, I think, in terms of the depths which senond rate TV was prepared to stoop to in order to fill up the airwaves when quality shows were expensive to get.

one "featured personality" the landlady has had her pub shut down cos she made such a din and had complaint from the LOCALS she wasn't a LOCAL. the others well dear god ask anyone round here who is odd and yes you will see them on the list. They are not interesting they are not insightful they are just people who think a lot of themselves, Please dont take it as a true picture of W11, like the film it bears no relation to real life and as someone has said the producers must have spent all of erm 10 minutes leafing through friends numbers to find their barber, grocer etc. We true locals wish they would all just go away and leave W11 alone!

Sounds incredibly boring

23. At 5:08pm on 22 Sep 2010, Zinedine Zidane - that's how I'd like to retire from my work too! wrote:
In what POSSIBLE sense could the pathetic freak show Big Brother be called decade defining?
----------------------------------------------
Whatever was on the box during your formative years will as you get older be remembered as defining your generation. Big Brother did this for a narrow section of our current big (brother) society.

It may just define a TV decade for a blinkered few of a certain age.

Gompertz is far too old to be part of this generation (as am I!).

Roll up , Roll Up

For what will probably be the latest load of multicultural propaganda rubbish from Channel 4.

Why bother making decent programmes when you can make C**P.

yaaaawwwnnnn! (documentary my a**e) there's no wonder people are turning off in droves. The TV is becoming redundant, why would I want to sit in front of the box and watch this unimaginative drivel when I can step outside of my front door and get it for real (and it would be interactive!) I guess its for lazy people who have agrophobia and can't set foot outside the house to see it for real.
Channel 4 is the new channel 5 everybody!

Decade defining? I think not.
Original? Hardly.
Real? Put a camera on someone, see how they behave, even if they are not continually conscious of the fact.
Objective? Oh come on, poor quality producers have been manipulating 'reality' to their own ends for decades.
Engaging? I'm sure viewers attracted to these programmes will smell this rotting corpse a mile off. And if they don't, well new paints dry faster than ever.
Another nail in the coffin of telly? OK, that was the last decade when BB and it's ilk proved that talented creators had moved onto to other mediums.

Yawn, yawn...

For now we just have a chunder of 'reality' shows. Maybe one day these can all be rounded up and dumped into a 'Reality Channel' we can all conveniently delete from our channel list.

I just watched it. Really strange considering there were 25 normal people and not one fart recorded in a week. My wife did about 23 farts just during the programme, including one that sounded like a strangled burt of machine gun fire. should get the cameras round for some real reality TV.

Agh! please no more....for the love of (a being that might exist and then again might not, to cover all bases) no more junk like this.

If you would like to watch this kind of stuff become a prison officer or a CCTV (were watching you do everything) operator, and don't give it to everyone like swine flu.
This type of ahem "Entertainment" is on a par with them stupid dancing in minefield on ice strictly gowe dancing strictest parents get me out of here.. RUBBISH!

Now this stuff is cheap tat that not even pound shops would CONSIDER to sell to you.
Yet we take this from TV? Why? I whole heartedly agree with TheTurk @30 a whole "reality tat channel" (tm) we can delete from EPG oh lovely

No wonder people eat lots, drink lots, get stoned lots, and other things that i cant remember how it goes now but i believe it involves a missionary? Just to escape from reality, then to watch some subverted version on TV...
If you want reality, watch the news (such as it is)
This reality stinks, and ANY version that doesn't involve spaceships kung foo and/or magical powers, flying monks and lucky eyebrows ghost cars or Fred Dibnah are not worth watching.

No wonder i listen to radio

Good comments - I agree with every one. I can't understand why Will Gompertz has spent this much effort and so many words promoting this sort of telly here? Is he after a column in one of the red tops?