Hogwash on 19/3/2006 at 03:03

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The whole thing has proved cyclical. When Big Brother and its ilk first aired, everyone was fascinated that you could watch a group of people for 24 hours a day and the New World Of Television was upon us like something out of some cheap 50s sci-fi novel. Full interactivity. Everyone's a winner. You can vote by mobile phone and it only costs ten pence!

Fast-forward a few years and the realisation that cheap-to-produce reality TV was superceding quality, well-written shows as weekend entertainment became commonplace. All of a sudden, denouncing reality television was fashionable. Complaining about Big Brother and I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here was standard issue for your average daily tabloid letters column. As an audience, we had enjoyed a brief flirtation with your Brians and your Jades and your other forgettable personalities but it was time to put the millennial entertainment experimentation to rest. We demanded more!

Or did we? Newspaper reporting is now more littered than ever with reports about who's hot or not in the jungle/house/cut-throat world of business. There wasn't a whole page dedicated to The Apprentice the first time it aired. Reality TV has swung back into novelty again. Apparently, Chantelle is an everyday girl who braved the odds instead of a shallow Paris Hilton wannabe. You can vote by mobile phone and it only costs fifty pence!

All I have an issue with is this myopia. If you genuinely like reality TV: fine, I'll begrudgingly accommodate your opinion . If you don't, I'm with you. But in a year we'll be sick of Alan Sugar and baying for the the golden days of Jonathan Creek and Spooks again and the cycle will continue.

As a viewing public, can we shit or get off the pot please?

Apologies for hijacking the thread and harshing the RTV buzz; please resume the wishing for death over some ones and zeroes stored on a hard disk somewhere. I'll see you in a couple of months when I'm drunk enough to be lured by the pink and purple glow of TTLG. :sly:

Sypha Nadon on 19/3/2006 at 06:23

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I still enjoy "Survivor", but it's lost a lot of the charm that the first one had.

Eshaktaar on 19/3/2006 at 09:23

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The German version of The Apprentice took the audience by storm.

It got discontinued right after the first episode.

Aja on 19/3/2006 at 10:27

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Shit I forgot about Iron Chef.

But then again, Iron Chef is implied.

Ulukai on 19/3/2006 at 14:36

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I'm reluctant to lump such things as The Apprentice and Hell's Kitchen in with Big Brother.

Big Brother is just some incredibly annoying twats who want to be famous for bitching at each other (which I can't stand to watch).

The Apprentice I find fascinating because it's thoroughly enjoyable to watch over-confident 'entreprenuers' prove on national TV that some of them can't, in fact, organise a piss-up in a brewery. And that makes awesome TV. Some of these people are the people who get promoted because it's where they can cause the least damage. "To make 100 barbecue chicken pizzas, we need 100 chickens, right guys?" lol what

Hell's Kitchen is great because of Gordon Ramsey. He's obnoxious, full of character, usually right, a damn good cook and I get the feeling he genuinely wants to help the restaurants in the show.

Oh, and LesserFollies wants his body. Am I Right? :D