thu 06/02/2025

reality TV

Television 2000-9: Reality TV

It’s possible Endemol didn’t give the book too close a reading. George Orwell conceived Big Brother as an all-seeing eye whose function was to enforce social and political conformity. Let us not revisit here the gallery of desperadoes, sextroverts...

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Television 2000-9: TV in the Age of Uncertainty

 If reality TV became a mass-audience opium for a world turning bleaker and nastier, what we might as well call unreality TV has been fulfilling a related role while following a different trajectory. In a world that has never been quite...

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Out of My Depth, ITV1

Celebrity talent-spotter Amanda Holden tries her hand at midwifery

It’s what any woman dreams of. You’re in the throes of childbirth, contorted by spasms of medieval-style agony, when in bounces chirpy Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda Holden to assist with the delivery. It remains to be seen how accurate this show...

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The Cultural Highlights of the Decade, BBC Online

This week the BBC News online magazine is running a Portrait of the Decade. Each day has brought a consideration of the words, the events, the people, the objects and, today, the cultural highlights of the decade. I was invited to consider those...

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We Are Family, BBC Two

Five of the Minchew siblings: from left to right - David, Stewart, Beryl, Dennis and Noel

That queen of solipsism, Katie Price, hasn’t been the only person on TV this week seeking “closure” (loved the short but savage Graham Norton spoof of Price on Monday night's show, by the way), and a new documentary series, We Are Family, is...

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theartsdesk in Milan: Death of a Quiz Show Host

Italy's quiz-show host Mike Bongiorno: 'a Warholian genius for fascinating, entrancing dullness'

“Guarda, è come se fosse morta la regina Elisabetta, sai?” I didn’t really need the comparison with the hypothetical demise of our own beloved monarch to be spelled out for me by my partner, a somewhat reserved professor of Paediatric Neurology at...

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