meish dot org: life, unfolding

Big Brother started again in the UK last night.

I won’t lie: I think it’s nonsense. I haven’t watched it since the very first series back in 1999 (?) (when it had the feeling of new curious sociological phenomenon, and everyone was genuinely riveted by the Nasty Nick leaving the house development) but since then it’s buzzed away vaguely at the back of my summers, without any particular attention from me, like a tired wasp against a windowpane.

Why would I want to watch the tedious antics of a bunch of people of limited intelligence and entertainment value who I neither know nor care about? I can do that every day on the bus.

Working in media, however, I can’t fail to have some residual awareness of what’s going on, and it’s become clear that in recent years, to try and revive the tired audience and keep users hooked throughout the long stretch of nightly updates throughout the summer, they’ve fiddled with the format, and introduced a series of gimmicks.

16 people in the house
A secret house next door to the real house
Cultural exchange with a contestant from another country’s Big Brother
A rich side and a poor side to the house
A king (or queen) of the house
Tasks which involve endurance
Tasks which involve ridicule
Tasks which involve backstabbing
Tasks which involve nudity
Fake evictions
Double evictions
Surprise evictions
Twins
Couples
Ex couples
“Famous” people

All have which have conspired to mean that

a) the format changes so radically every year that the rules can be somewhat hard to follow (if you bother at all)
b) the show is less reality TV and more prolonged gameshow. It’s a residential version of the generation game, mostly, combined with elements of the infamous Milgram and Stanford prison experiments.

To save you the bother of watching this year, I’ve managed to source a top-secret list of all the gimmicks involving format, tasks and contestants that they’ll be employing this season to try and keep audiences interested:

1. They are all actually horses
2. Half of them are blind and the other half are deaf
3. They are all left handed
4. They can only talk in rhyme for three weeks
5. One of them is a secret Libyan
6. Two extra housemates have been hiding in a secret compartment under a trapdoor beneath the fridge for the first eight weeks, only coming out at night to nibble on leftovers
7. They must all answer to the name Trevor
8. The house is built over a plague pit
9. There’s no toilet
10. They’re not broadcasting it at all this year, so all the housemates are gurning and preening and backstabbing for nothing
11. A 1 ton bomb will go off if anyone mentions J___ G_____
12. All the beds will be replaced by sandwiches for a week
13. They must all follow a macrobiotic diet
14. An additional housemate will be introduced, who will refuse to speak to anyone
15. One housemate must volunteer to die or they will all be killed
16. They must end every sentence with “TWIIIIIIIIING!” on Thursdays

That should keep them watching.

Or not.