Reality TV

I watched it so that you didn’t have to: ITV2’s Big Brother reviewed

14 October 2023 9:00 am

Big Brother is Nineteen Eighty-Four rewritten by Aldous Huxley. The detail that George Orwell got wrong is that far from…

Rewriting history

22 July 2023 9:00 am

If you don’t subscribe to every last detail of the LGBTQ+ agenda, then basically you are a Nazi. This was…

The BBC's fairly desperate new reality show: Unbreakable reviewed

8 October 2022 9:00 am

On first impression, you might have thought that Unbreakablewas just a fairly desperate reality show cobbled together from I’m a…

The cruelty of reality TV was part of the appeal

28 May 2022 9:00 am

Jade Goody appeared on Big Brother in 2002. She was a short, loud, blonde-haired woman who broadcast her every thought…

Some of the best social commentary around: Celebrity Book Club with Steven & Lily reviewed

5 March 2022 9:00 am

When I was ten years old I had a babysitter who was a beautiful graduate student at an Ivy League…

The genius of Caveh Zahedi

6 November 2021 9:00 am

365 Stories I Want To Tell You Before We Both Die is a podcast that experimental filmmaker Caveh Zahedi started…

reality tv

Resistance reality TV has jumped the shark

14 November 2019 9:07 am

Comey. Cohen. Strzok. Page. Blasey Ford. Kavanaugh. Mueller. Taylor and Kent. Are you fed up yet? It sometimes feels as…

The left-wing bias on Celebrity Gogglebox was excruciating

11 November 2017 9:00 am

This week I want to put the boot in to Gogglebox (Channel 4, Fridays). Not the mostly likeable, everyday version,…

When in Rome…

14 October 2017 9:00 am

I know I keep saying that in Decline of the West terms we’re all currently living in Rome, circa 400…

In praise of braindead filth

8 July 2017 9:00 am

Melvyn Bragg on TV: The Box That Changed The World (BBC2, Saturday) was just what you would have expected of…

Would I have broken my neck for a bit of TV fame?

13 February 2016 9:00 am

Not long ago I was asked if I wanted to participate in a Channel 4 reality show called The Jump.…

Twenty things I will ban when I am elected your Dictator For Life in 2016

12 December 2015 9:00 am

  Things I am going to ban when, by popular acclaim, I am elected your Dictator For Life in 2016.…

I’m a Celebrity is like The Simpsons: good if you’re thick; even better if you’re not

28 November 2015 9:00 am

The best bit in I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! (ITV) will be when the prisoners finally revolt…

Jonathan Coe’s raucous social satire smoulders with anger

14 November 2015 9:00 am

When Rachel, one of the unreliable narrators of Number 11, wants to ‘go back to the very beginning’, she starts…

Hunted blows a fresh breeze through the stale world of reality TV

17 October 2015 8:00 am

Television used to employ entertainers to entertain the public. Back then you could count the channels on the fingers of…

Why I won’t be going on Celebrity Big Brother — despite being tempted

23 May 2015 9:00 am

Why I had to say no to Celebrity Big Brother

Spirited, indomitable and proud: matriarch Julie Young

Benefits Street reviewed: if anyone’s being exploited, it’s the taxpayers, says James Delingpole

16 May 2015 9:00 am

My favourite scene in the first episode of the new series of Benefits Street (Mondays, Channel 4) — now relocated…

Don’t sneer at I’m a Celebrity. The show is teaching us to become model citizens

29 November 2014 9:00 am

One of the great benefits of having teenage children is that they force you out of your fuddy-duddy comfort zone.…

Pity I’m a Celebrity’s token old guys

22 November 2014 9:00 am

I had thought that my days of being approached by reality show producers hoping to put together a cast of…

Does Joey Essex know what ‘reem’ actually means?

22 November 2014 9:00 am

Joey Essex is a celebrity who appeared in the ‘scripted reality’ programme The Only Way is Essex, named not after…