From today's Scotsman an article titled 'Live feed. The day TV turned on its audience' ...
'Bedsitcom attempts to address the main problems of Big Brother, its lack of action and its dumb dialogue, by way of a fiendish trick. Three of the flatmates in the producers’ London loft apartment are your regular young wannabes eager for any kind of television exposure, however humiliating. The other three are actors placed there to torment and persecute their unknowing victims, with the help of a writing team and the requisite dose of television-industry malice...
The three "real" (strange how that adjective seems unusual in the "reality show" context) flatmates, Shirine, Bob and Dave, were picked for their mix of normality and gullibility. To be fair to them, the Big Brother casts have featured so many grotesquely unlikely types that it’s hardly surprising they don’t immediately twig that their eccentric flatmates are actors. The other trick to throw them off the scent is that the actors’ thespian talents are so limited that it’s scarcely credible that they are professionals.
The tone is pitched at farce from the outset, rather than anything more potentially provocative. The quick cuts, jokey narrative, and the plot update after the advertising break for those whose attention spans are stuck at a four-year-old’s level, are reminders of the gossamer-thin premise.
Seriousness is studiously avoided. The producers took care to avoid situations where the actors might interact on a proper emotional level with the real people, instead going for the false cosiness that has always characterised British sitcom. In the first episode, Paul (actor) invites his Mum to visit. She takes an erotic fancy to Rufus (actor doing a posh-but-dim schtick) and Bob (real) has to play chaperone. It’s all a bit sweet, daft and pointless, and very British in its reliance on embarrassment as the plot’s main fuel.....'
• Bedsitcom, tonight, 08/12/03, 10:40pm, Channel 4.
Taken from here.
