Until we get gems like Cheaters and To Catch A Predator here in the UK, watching self-important retards be awful will always be the most thrilling thing about reality TV.
Big Brother was really great for that about half way through its run, when they started putting devout Muslims in with gays. Then it got reigned-in by the powers that be and sanitised. Plus, it always had to have some pretense of morality around it and all sorts of boring legal clauses that meant all the smuttiest conversations and the most retarded, ignorant or facile behaviour ( also know as ‘the best bits’) were cut out in favour of sounds from the garden, or worse, footage of embarrassing love trysts (all of our early 20s love affairs look that awkward to outsiders though, it’s not just the fame hungry who act like babies with that stuff).
Big Brother was an innovator in the field of retard exploitation, and for that we should salute it. We wouldn’t be where we are today without the awful fuckheads on that show showing us that everyone except for ourselves and our friends are awful fuckheads. You remember how stupid Jade Goody was? She didn’t do anything about the lumps in her breasts for months because she was scared of doctors! (Correction: it was cervical cancer apparently)
The thing with being the first and the most high profile in a genre is you start to look dated and establishment as soon as the next generation come along - remember when The Office came out and all of a sudden I’m Alan Partridge looked like an outdated comic dinosaur.
If Big Brother is Black Sabbath, then Young Dumb And Living Off Mum is 80s era Napalm Death, because they’ve taken the genre to its logical, most extreme conclusion on 0.00005% of the budget (grittier, more aggro, nastier). Plus, because they’re flying so far under the radar of the mainstream, no Southern Baptists have protested outside their concerts/no one has reported them to Ofcom (I’d like to see Davina McCall piss on the Alamo and get banned from Texas though), so they can get away with it.
You’d never have suspected the right-on, socially concerned BBC to commission a show like YDALOM. But thank Jesus that for some reason BBC3 is turning into a sarcastic version of MTV, holding a mirror up to youth culture so it can see its grotesque reflection. Did you see the people on Snog, Marry, Avoid? It was incredible stuff.
YDALOM is the best they’ve done yet though, because it follows the format of Big Brother to the letter, but dispenses with all the pleasantries that Big Brother feels it has to include, like getting misguided but ultimately good mannered/non-awful contestants involved, stopping illegal behaviour or being non-judgmental in the voiceover.
The contestants are a fantastic collection of awful social stereotypes: among them a Greek Veruca Salt (who is pretty buff), a ghastly Essex proto-hipster, an Alfie style misogynist, a sarky gay – whose dry humour gives him the air of a frosty, clever Kenneth Williams- and a queeny deluded X Factor contestant from Cornwall (he once supported the Cheeky Girls and has a doll collection), it’s all solid gold.
They’ve taken these shithead cunts, put them in a shitty student house in what looks like North London, and each week they do demeaning jobs that they always fail. Finally, one of them gets chucked out for being the shittest BY THEIR OWN SHITHEAD PARENTS!!! The best bits are when they fail at stuff, which is all the time. But other highlights include when they guzzle own brand vodka ’til they’re sick or have the best arguments ever shown on TV. Then the voiceover is fucking rude about them for being such a bunch of cunts. It’s how I always hoped Big Brother would be: exploitative, cruel, viciously spiteful and unrelentingly judgmental.
I know you’re above this sort of TV and you’d rather be doing pencil drawings of wolves and reblogging shit on tumblr, but check it out for yourselves. TV rules!!!!!!!!!!
(first person to find all the contestants’ facebook profiles and send them to me wins a decent prize - [email protected])
