TV.
Last night was the first programme of this year's 'giB rehtorB'. I like it and I always watch quite a lot of it and I don't care who knows it. I always find the little details of other people's lives fascinating, which is why I read blogs and why I took part in the first 'efiL pawS' for that magazine years ago.

This one looks quite promising but with a rather bizarre g@y bias. Out of twelve people - four are g@y. As the programme is meant to vaguely mirror British society that is something of a surprise. I think that in the past the g@y contestants have always given 'good television' and always lasted through to the final weeks. Last year was fine by me but apparently seen as boring by the general public - as they had made the apparently hideous mistake of choosing a set of pleasant, attractive, not totally stupid people who were nice to each other. OMG - that must never happen again! So now they have picked out a collection who are all almost guaranteed to set each other's teeth on edge and who mostly pride themselves on 'telling it how it is' etc.. I find that much less interesting. I far prefer to watch a group fall apart who originally seemed civilised and perfectly suited.

I also watched some of the American B... B..... last year. What do you think it says about our two countries that the American programme is set up as the exact opposite of ours? Here the internal nominations for who is thrown out each week are kept strictly private to the point that anyone who hints in even the tiniest way, raised eyebrow, head tilt etc., to another contestant about who they are voting for is warned and in one case forced to leave. They are not allowed to take in writing materials or even books in case they use them to indicate or influence another person's eviction choice.

Whereas ... in America the entire programme is about ganging up and forming alliances to ensure that you have back-up to stay in and someone else is seen as a threat. They talk constantly about who they are going to nominate and manipulate, lie and bitch the whole time. In the last one a girl even slept with someone on camera to ensure her survival and then the next morning he voted her out. In England the contestants walk out into vast cheering crowds and fireworks etc. In America they ooze through a door, alone, into an empty interview room. At the end of the English one the winner goes through all the above magnified a hundred times and meets the previous contestants on an outdoor stage - everyone hugging and weeping. In America they appear, again, in the empty studio with the previous contestants sitting silently on a row of chairs. Last year some couldn't even bring themselves to congratulate the winner as they said that in order to win she had behaved like such a devious bitch they never wanted to see her again - and this included her boyfriend on the outside, who said he now had '..reservations' about their future together.

Of course the American one is much more dramatic, so the differences probably have no more meaning than that the American producers are better at keeping viewers glued to the screen.
- posted by Iris @ 5/29/2004 09:49:00 AM comment