Television
Repulsive but compulsive
Marcus Berkmann
Meanwhile, in the Big Brother house, life proceeds as normal. Two inmates play table-tennis without a table. A Welsh woman leafs through a magazine she has leafed through 673 times before. Out in the garden, a gay man with prominent pectorals 'works' on his tan. Who will cook the porridge today? Bear in mind that these people don't yet know the election result.
Compulsive or repulsive? Once again the nation divides cleanly into two. In the red corner, the millions who would not dream of watching Big Brother (Channel 4). In the blue corner, the millions who seem to think and talk of little else. The two groups eye each other warily, for there is no middle ground in this debate, no possibility of consensus. If you don't watch it. you will never be able to understand how cruelly, fatuously gripping it can be. If you do watch it, you are too busy watching it to argue. What's remarkable is that only three weeks ago everyone who makes or watches or writes about television was seriously wondering whether a second series could ever work. No such doubts now. In future it will just be part of summer, the television equivalent
of the hosepipe ban. They will still be making these shows after we are all dead.
Last week, of course, was more than averagely momentous. Penny, the teacher, who had looked on the verge of being carted away by men in white coats, was voted out by a sympathetic (or possibly horrified) public — only to be replaced by Josh, the gay man with the pecs, who we later learned from all newspapers was really called Paul. (Penny was really called Lisa. What's the matter with these people?) The nine surviving inmates had not known that Josh was coming, and their reactions were priceless. Welsh Helen and the tiny firecracker that is Narinder simpered and drooled and wondered aloud whether he really was gay after all. The *straight men glowered in the background. Poor Brian, the tubby flight attendant, who had settled into his role as Token Homosexual, was more put out than anyone. Two weeks of perfecting his Graham Norton impersonation had come to naught. It is well known that last year's winner, chirpy Scouse builder Craig, was supported by a huge and leery gay vote — and here was someone who looked as though he had been grown in a laboratory to appeal to that electorate. As it is, Josh's inability to keep his shirt on for more than three minutes seems likely to count against him. Even the gays can't stand him, according to the Guardian. It's the quiet ones — Brummie Dean, vaguely posh Elizabeth — who are looking the best bets at this stage.
But you never know. Bubble, the fearlessly dim Chelsea supporter, and Welsh Helen, whose tiny brain rattles around inside her head like a pea in a bucket, would have been most viewers' favourites for early dismissal. Instead it was Stuart, management man incarnate, who left after week three. First the needy women, next the controlling men — a pattern begins to emerge. Stuart had obviously been on thousands of courses, and treated the whole escapade as a series of meetings. Had he introduced a flow-chart during dinner you
wouldn't have been remotely surprised. But he cooked his goose after drinking too much cider and shouting at Amma in the hot tub. Whoever makes Big Brother must have shares in Strongbow for, like tramps, the inmates have rapidly discovered that cider is the cheapest and most effective method of getting off your face. Fortunately we are invariably on hand to witness the results.
Amid all the high jinks, though, there are moments of genuine drama. All the inmates are addressing the challenge in different ways, but the great lesson is that in Big Brother, you can't fake it forever. After he had been nominated, Stuart went into the diary room and tried to express his feelings. He couldn't. For a while it looked as though he was going to cry. Instead he left one of the longest silences seen on prime-time television in years. At its best the show gives us real human emotions, much as television drama used to, when it could be bothered. But television drama sprints at movie pace these days, and engages with no one; so instead of realism we have to have reality, albeit a skewed and manipulated version of it. Compulsive and repulsive, then, and we in the blue corner wouldn't want it any other way.
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