The UK version of Big Brother finished on Friday 27th July, this was the second season of the series, which is aired by Channel Four. It's now part of a raft of what we call reality television, which has hit our television screens over the last few years. I didn't get the chance to watch most of the first season because I was working, but caught most of this series the 2001 edition and watched a lot of the live stuff too on the Channel Four digital station E4.
For a number of weeks a group of supposedly ordinary people are forced to live with each other in building built for this purpose. In the UK version very little in the way of electronic equipment and other luxuries are allowed. All clothes they wear have to show no branded names or any names at all, this is to stop free advertising for the likes of Nike and so on. They all eat sleep and drink each other and have the lives for the duration of the weeks taped twenty-four hours day, only basic toilet requirements are really excluded from our TV screens. In the UK version after a few weeks they all have to start voting each other out of the house. After they all make their nominations each week, the general public then votes someone out from the choice the housemates have made, usually from two people who got the most votes. Also in the UK version the prize money for the last person who's left is £75,000 which is about $100,000. The producers of the show give the housemates tasks to do each week, as well as adding enough structure to their lives to help give at least a minimum of entertainment for the general viewing public. This they hope will give them enough encouragement to provide spontaneous entertainment and dramas through the house mates own thoughts and actions. All these elements and more explain the basics of Big Brother the UK version.
Being the politically correct crazy nation we have become the housemates have to represent a broad reflection of the so politically correct UK. This means you get a relatively equal spread of men and women and at least one token black person and at least one token gay person, along with someone who is a little on the religious nutty side too.
This time around the token gay person happened to be a man called Brian an Airline Steward, (soooooo stereo typically an occupation classed by the media as a gay occupation), and my god was he a catty camp queen if ever I saw one. In fact on the scale of camp at the start of the show he was at least a six out of ten. Then by the end of the show he became a ten out of ten, a fully paid up member of the small bag, high heel trainer, I Will Survive ringing out on the mobile phone, camp queen brigade (you know what I mean by that guys, don't you, LOL). The producers of the show decided that two weeks into the show straight after the first eviction, they would put another person in the house. They also decided that the UK television nation would have the choice of one of three people to select to vote in. There was one man and two women to choose from. Although the straight people within the nation could not see that the one guy out of three people to choose from was gay, all gay men through out the land could tell that this guy was very suspect on the homosexual side of things. If not by the things he said in his interviews his choice of designer labels gave us gay folk a more than majority percentage bet, that he indeed was part of the arse bending over brigade. The women voters within the nation went for the guys good looks, the straight men went for his "I promise lots of fun, games and nudity (thinking he would be bonking the women, so tits would be all over the place)"LOL. Most of the camp gay voters went for the designer labels, whilst the rest of the gay guys in the UK simply just wanted to see if he would get it on with Brian in the house if he was chosen. So the person the nation voted into the house after the first eviction was indeed the one guy out of the choice of three people and this guy was called Josh. Once the votes were counted the television producers must have been jumping for joy because they hoped that with two gay guys in the house things would get very hot indeed.
From the first moment Josh entered the house on one early Saturday afternoon, he became the centre of attention, both to the women and the men. The women because they all thought he was gooooorrrrrrgggggeeeee, the men because the entire heterosexual guys in the house had already made their mark and thus was perceived as a threat. Brian at the start did not know Josh was gay but was equally intrigued by the new visitor. As soon as Josh had made it clear to the house that he was floating in a different ocean, or to put it more literally bending over and taking it up the arse, the straight guys in the house felt less threatened. The women felt let down because he was so good looking, but Brian then became the one who felt threatened being a camp gay guy, now in the presence of a camp gay labels queen Josh.
As the days went by if you watched enough of the show you could tell that camp queen Brian was getting more intimidated by the labels queen Josh. Brian's first remedy to the situation was to move into the girls bedroom which also made him look more welcoming at first hiding his opinion of Josh. It took Josh maybe about just over a week or so to realise Brian's anxieties towards him and then after that Brian went into over drive being even more bitchy and nit picking with Josh than with anybody else in the house. So all this went on and the tensions between the two of them got worse but they managed to get through it and to the dismay of the producers of the show no sexual contact between the two was ever going to happen. Little did the producers know at nearly the very start of the show that two people one called Paul the other called Helen would be the love interest of the house. Paul was the straight Essex head up his arse lad and Helen was the rather young and very naive and not too clued up welsh girl.
At the end of the day on a reality game show like this with money at stake modest money at that, but still enough to stir the interest of most people, can people act themselves or will they act one extreme of themselves more. I think the answer to that basically is the latter. This is partly because the television cameras are filming them all the time, and also partly because they think tactically on how they will get to be the last person in the house and claim the money. You also have to take into account the fact that above the interest of winning the money, most of the people attracted to playing a part in being one of the housemates will tend to attract the type of person wanting to work in show business. This is an easy picking for the average Joe public in the street wanting to be a television personality, who have no famous or rich friends to help them push their way into instant show business fame.
With Brian winning the prize money and being pretty popular, television offers are already flooding in for him. He is thought of by most people to be the next "Graham Norton" type. Some of the other housemates are also having offers thrown at them too. What you betting that before Christmas Dean will have released at least one single and probably an album, off the back of the Big Brother show. Even though Dean is a crap singer. God I wanted to smash him over the head with his guitar within days of him playing that bloody guitar, LOL.
Like all television programmes the reality shows will eventually peak in their popularity just like all the DIY decorating programmes did before this phase of television shows started. I wouldn't go as far as saying that this type of show is dumming down television, even though it is a fairly cheap cash cow for the television companies who produce them. I would say however that it does use up a big chunk of expensive airtime on the cheap and airs less of a range of other programmes.
Not all the reality television shows have been successful, as the television companies had hoped. Take the UK version of Survivor for instance, being on ITV it should have got better than average ratings but was a bit of a let down to say the least. A second series may now be put on hold. At least I hope it is because it was dreadful and I only watched one show, it was boring, boring, boring.
Big Brother in the main was successful over here because it was one of the first reality shows to really take off. In future seasons they will have to come up with new twists to the series, otherwise Channel Four will find themselves having to turn to something else to fill their airtime with.