Oh, Brother!

It's true. It's all true (apparently) that everyone's favourite 24-hour nothing-fest Big Brother shall be returning to tellyboxes everywhere just a mere twelve months after its self-proclaimed 'last edition ever!'

I think the main thing I should point out with this is that it's being resurrected on Channel Five: TV's dumping ground, the long-lost cousin of entertainment (I mean have you seen some of their output, like The Wright Stuff and Live From Studio Five? I haven't! But I have watched clips of each and desperately wanted to reach for the nearest katana or at least a length of sharpened lead piping, just so I could perform the Japanese ritual of Seppuku, right there in front of the TV).

According to the Daily Star (scoff, snort, scoff): 

"It will still have things like the Diary Room. The show's format will also stay the same so fans don't have to worry. It will still be the same programme that they've all grown to love over the years but with a bigger, brighter and sexier future."

Oh, brother! The simple minds of the public glaring into the magic, midget window in the corner shall not be sent into submission with grand changes, but they shall be fed with more manipulated twaddle about the boring, closed-off-from-reality happenings (ironic for a 'Reality' show to remove people from reality) of a handful of attention-seeking wannabes: half of whom will realise they can't hack it and walk out (you know, when thousands of others would've preferred to be there in their place) and the other half desperate to exploit themselves in front of millions so they could probably get a magazine deal afterwards. Far be it for me to judge - I am, after all, just a mere one in the approximate 61 million UK dwellers - but I found Big Brother to be quite interesting back in its heyday. The premise: take 10-12 people from all walks of life, put them in a monitored solitary confinement facility and watch them react to one another. Will they befriend each other? Fight each other? Compliment? Clash? It's an interesting psychologial experiment, I think. Over time, though, it evolved into a mad desperate rush to see if anyone would have sex or beat each other up or resort to cannibalism or something. And lo, people stopped living their own lives and began feeding off the lives of people they could see inside the telly instead.

Not surprisingly, Channel Five (or "five" or "5" or whatever they call themselves these days [message to Channel Five: Have you considered rebranding your channel as "The Dumping Ground"?]) want to get some young sexy thing to front the show in the absense of Davina. How about, someone like... oh, you know... Cheryl Cole? (You know, that one who's famous for being that one from Girls Aloud. What about the rest of Girls Aloud? Oh, they're too busy not being famous for being the other ones from Girls Aloud.) That's not a question posed by me though. That is actually who they're trying to line up for the part. I can't help but find it extremely surreal that every Friday night the country will be treated to renditions of "Big Brutha house, it's Cheral he-yah. Are ya all alreet? We're live on channal five, reet. Noo swearin'." etc. I somehow feel she'd be much more suited to the narration of the daily highlights shows since we're used to a Geordie voice telling us what people are doing as we're watching it, and as we've already explored, you can't change too much or people's simple brains will boil in their head and explode all over the place. At least this way, people might just mistakenly think that Marcus Bentley's had a sex change, or at least caught his balls in a vice.

I think the worst part in all of this comes from how our summers are affected. There was a time (although I don't remember it any more) when summer was a season of staying outdoors, enjoying time with fellow humans with whom we establish friendships, water fights, casual drinking and general merriment. Although, ever since Big Brother came along, summers have become filled with staying in, watching the TV and following the lives of the people on it as they enjoy time with fellow humans, establish friendships, have water fights, drink excessively and generally fuck about... because they can. We, as a people, had just got our summers back following the demise of Big Bro on Channel 4, and this, the first of those summers, is about to be cruelly snatched away by the same thing that took them from us in the first place.

I blame you, Channel Five! (or The Dumping Ground, as you are now known if you've heeded my advice from earlier on.) Still, I suppose now people will actually be watching the channel for once.