SERIOUS allegations are hanging over Channel 4’s Married at First Sight, but it’s not the first reality show to see nothing wrong with engineering appalling situations. Like these:
Naked Attraction
‘Base’, ‘animalistic’ and ‘taking civilisation backwards’ are fair descriptions of the naked dating show, in which contestants are dehumanised by being put in a box then exhibited like meat. It’s got that horrible Channel 4 ‘we’re so edgy’ vibe to it, and if indeed it was made by a bunch of real-life Nathan Barleys it would explain why no one said: ‘Wait, this is f**king horrible.’
There’s Something About Miriam
On Sky One cisgender male contestants lusted after hottie Miriam, who turned out to be trans. It’s a better reveal than discovering your carriage clock is worth f**k all on Antiques Roadshow, but the risks are painfully obvious: one contestant turned violent and the show undoubtedly contributed to Miriam Rivera’s suicide years later. Also the whole thing was clearly just morally wrong, like devising a show called Who Wants to Be A Hospital Arsonist?
The Jenny Jones Show
In 1995 Jonathan Schmitz went on this US show, where Scott Amedure, who he knew socially, revealed a crush on him. Schmitz later shot Amedure in the chest with a shotgun he bought the same day. Who could have predicted there’d be bad consequences to appearing to call into question the sexuality of a man you know nothing about on national TV in a country awash with guns?
Love Island
Unedifying to begin with, because the premise is: put simpleminded humans in a confined space and wait for them to mate. Meanwhile contestants have claimed they were deliberately turned into hate figures, and many struggled with overnight fame, with two committing suicide. As if this wasn’t enough red flags, the show now requires contestants to have eight sessions of therapy afterwards and be monitored by a welfare team for at least 14 months. Strangely that doesn’t happen with Countdown.
Big Brother
The Shilpa Shetty incident on BB5 got all the attention, but viewers noticed the makers ratcheting up the aggro from BB3 onwards, mainly with ‘conflicting personalities’, ie. adding a load of annoying twats. At no point did Endemol or Channel 4 say: ‘Maybe we shouldn’t keep fomenting extreme personal hatred in a closed environment where any sane person would be justified in drowning any of these dreadful bastards in the hot tub?’
Embarrassing Bodies
Oh come on, this should be called Latterday Medical Freakshow, and illness ghouls were treated to everything from severe acne to the joys of bowel leakage. Unsurprisingly Channel 4 claims it destigmatises distressing conditions, but it’s still just a licence for office workers at the water cooler to say: ‘OMG! Did you see the guy with the weird bent cock?’ Or indeed for strangers in a pub to say: ‘OMG! You’re the guy with the weird bent cock!’
