| Author | Message | ||
     Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.210.15 |
I don't normally care about such matters, but ITV has just scraped the lowest barrel in televisual history with this vulgar, distasteful show. Just when you thought Davinia McCall couldn't stoop any lower in her career, she agrees to present this bilge. Everyone involved in it should be ashamed. From the deliberately ambiguous title to the whole tawdry premise. Shocking, really. I just heard one of the tearful kids of the overweight contestants say this: "I hope our parents win [that is, beat all the other contestants lose more weight within a given period], because they're the only parents we'll ever have." | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
It's been on US TV for a few years now, mate. Vile, innit? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.210.15 |
Forgive my ignorance. No, in fact applaud it. | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 207.6.255.47 |
We've just started getting promotional crap in the papers (called "features" apparently, but actually media releases with news-writers' names inserted at the top of them) for the USA-version of something called Shameless. I'd never heard of it before. Possibly the same celebration of Gary's ignorance (no, not Gary's; for a change) could be applied to me. Then there's The Swan, which may be something we started here or you did there. Ridiculous. Cosmetic Surgery is the Way to Happiness for Everyone, basically. I think there's a bride's version as well, because 'he may have proposed, but did he mean it without you losing 40 pounds, getting a lift, dying your hair, changing your wardrobe, and then learning how to be better in bed? BAH! | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
The triple-headed nadir of Reality TV: There's Something About Miriam: a bunch of guys compete to fuck this woman, and it's finally revealed to the winner that "she" is actually a post-op transvestite. The one where women compete by having plastic surgery (Extreme Make-over?) The Biggest Loser. Big fat people with psychological issues are lampooned for all our amusement. | ||
| Rosswarren (Rosswarren) Username: Rosswarren Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 81.158.5.21 |
Shameless is a drama show rather than reality TV. William H Macy is playing the Frank character in the US version. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I can't watch Shameless; it's too close to the reality of where I grew up and the people I grew up with to be even remotely amusing. It just makes me sad. | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.109.179.24 |
Shameless for the first two series was brilliant. Then Paul Abott left and they basically sat there flogging a dead horse until it was unrecognisable as the sassy, wise show it had started as. The Biggest Loser is fucking vile. Davina is a shameless media whore. She was on the One Show earlier defending how they were genuinely helping people with The Biggest Loser. Utterly sickening. I hate this culture of cruelty TV. We should be celebrating humanity, not denigrating it at every turn. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.209.217 |
Jon- absolutely. Davina McCall isn't solely responsible for this hateful, degrading shite. She just gives it a pretty face. 'Media whore' is, in this instance, a wholly accurate term. The only flaw in it is that it's insulting to prostitutes, who are victims of exploitation themselves... I don't think the same can be said of her. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.71 |
For similar but not exactly the same reasons as Zed, I can't watch Shameless either. Or the Royale Family. Not could I watch Boys From the Blackstuff when I was a kid. Tried and just wept when it was on. As for the show Gary started this thread about: nope, not seen it. Nope, don't wanna see it. Nope, not even surprised at the state of it or, to my best guess, the poor sods who're 'contestants'. What happens to the winners and losers? The winner gets to stay slim, the losers get a packet of crisps and keel over, nuked by a heart attack? | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.71 |
Mind you, the Jeremy Kyle Show is a work of twisted genius. That is fiction, isn't it? | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
I think I caught some of The Biggest Loser or something similar on cable TV a while back. I couldn't believe what I was seeing! It is horrendous. But IMO the whole of so-called 'reality TV' consists of people who seem to be happy to be humiliated in front of the TV cameras. I reckon it started with Jerry Springer. I used to watch some of that, simply because I found it so unbelievable. I think I've said this here before but I reckon Nigel Kneale had the right idea with Year of the Sex Olympics. Get the 'contestants' on an island (or in a house, or what ever) and let a real-life serial killer loose!  | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
caroline - watch Session 9, takes that idea a step forward. Or Battle Royale for that matter. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
And didn't they do a spoof Big Brother thing like that too? | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
Are you thinking of Dead Set - Charlie Brooker's zombie thing? That doesn't quite fit the category. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.177.92 |
I saw a huge billboard in Sunderland the other week advertising a funeral parlour; 'A funeral to be proud of', it said. I'm still scratching my head now over who exactly feels the pride in that scenario. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.177.92 |
It all started with Candid Camera, reality telly. People looking stupid, us laughing. It stems from that. It always made me uncomfortable that, even as a kid - seeing the victims faces, even of the most trivial prank. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Oh god, yes - I'd forgotten Candid Camera! Actually, I used to enjoy that as a kid - laughed along with my parents. But then I was too young to know any better, I guess.  Weber - might be Dead Set I'm thinking of. I don't know as I never watched it, only heard about it. As soon as any mention of 'reality TV' is made I switch off. | ||
| James Armstrong (James_armstrong) Username: James_armstrong Registered: 10-2010 Posted From: 86.148.166.6 |
Going off on a slight tangent here but have any of you seen the film My Little Eye? It's a favourite of mine, especially for the way it addresses the horrors of reality T.V. and the media's love of voyeurism (not by any chance the spoof you're referring to is it, Carolinec?) |