I want to talk about Big Brother, something we haven’t done for years and years really.
And that’s because, as we enter the show’s last ever week on Channel 5 (the final is Monday November 5th) there’s one thing I’ve been saying again and again on Twitter whilst watching it, and that’s “haha, this is a great task!” Gone are the “what did X say about you in the diary room” shenanigans of Channel 5 Big Brother’s past, largely gone are the stupid tasks where everyone is working hard to complete a task, only for the actual task to be to fail the task. No, this year they’ve been a bit more gameshowy, a bit more clever, a the ideas have been a bit more fun.
When it’s not been grabbing suddenly falling coins (or towards the end, balls in the garden, but only for people who have actually got out of bed), it’s been pretending they’re on a plane for hours with a crying baby, keeping a giant running sand timer topped up and most recently hysterical prison subterfuge (if you only watch one episode of C5 Big Brother this year, I’d like to point to the episode that went out Thursday 25th September as an episode of consistent hilarity and heroism). They’ve been entertaining and playful and great fun in a way BB hasn’t really explored for years.
If I have one problem with the series it’s that Big Coin hasn’t proved crucial enough and probably needed a bit more time in the oven. In the first week it was important, as the lowest totals would be put to the public vote, but since then not having Big Coin hasn’t really mattered, and there hasn’t been an awful lot to actually spend it on – the auction prices are typically very low and the decisions not that important, except in one or two cases where having the most bought power. I reckon there needed to be more opportunities for totals to rise and fall other than the one challenge during the week (most of which have been enjoyable), the auctions to increase with bigger jumps than the 5 to 10 they typically are, and something either really good to happen to the person with the most and/or something really bad to happen with the person with the least, like automatic nomination. Big Coin decisions should be difficult and relevant to position in the house and I’m not sure it’s quite worked like that here.
I can’t say I’ve watched BB much during the Channel 5 run – as I’ve said in the past, an hour a night for weeks on end is a lot to give up these days, but I’ve kept up with this one all the way through and it’s sad to me it has rated so poorly.
Shopping tasks have always been the most enjoyable component of BBUK to me, I think the most evergreen take on the BB format would be the UK’s task design, house design and editing, combined with the US style of gameplay and housemate choice.
Canada gets very close, but doesn’t commit to transforming the house as much as UK does. Although if you’re in the mood for creative BB tasks, Canada did one last series where they gave the housemates a huge party and then made them do a quiz about the night prior when they woke up and were hugely hungover.
I still remain unconvinced that a show that’s 90% game talk, as BBUS tends to be, would go down well over here. Although I’m happy to see them try.
I’m mainly thankful they dropped “competition” and “ceremony” pretty quickly over here, the tone is so, so wrong.
That exact BB Canada game was used earlier on this series, a party the night before and then a Game Changer quiz the next morning. In fact a number of the Game Changers were taken straight from Canada/US.
It’s so annoying that this year has been so good, it’s the first time I’ve been even half-interested in Big Brother in years, I thought it had been axed a couple of years ago for some reason. It’s surprisingly sad to see it go. It feels a lot more like the first couple of series, where the tasks where actually inventive and interesting. Feels more like a game show (in a good way) this series, rather than just some people shouting at each with the tasks there just because they have to be. The tasks feel much more like entertaining games than irritating chores to fill the time. Maybe Channel 5 could fill the reality-show hole with The Mole?
It sounds like House of Games is back Nov 11th.
How has Letterbox been doing?
A Sunday? Have they just dispensed with the ‘weekly’ format, or is it because the Strictly thing on BBC2 is an hour on a Friday? Still seems very strange. Thanks though, I shall look out for it.
No that’s a mistake on my part I think, the Monday.