Brother beyond the pale?

11 April 2012

If you thought Derren Brown's fake Russian roulette stunt a few days ago showed British TV in a distasteful light, just wait until next week. Channel 4, in a triumph for Big Brother executives who have spent five fruitless years trying to capture rumpy pumpy through their peeping- tom cameras, is to show the first "live" sex on prime-time British TV.

Yet the "consenting adults" are not your normal BB housemates intent on becoming minor celebrities. The giggling and fumbling under a duvet in a darkened room emanate from two 18-year-olds, Jade Dyer, a barmaid from Lowestoft, Suffolk, and Tommy Wright, a science student from Weymouth, Dorset.

The scenes are a dubious "landmark" for British "reality" TV, though what viewers are most likely to conclude is that the whole episode carries with it the whiff of classic TV hypocrisy.

Our young lovers appear in Teen Big Brother - The Experiment, a programme said to have been conceived with the notion of assessing the behaviour of a small group of teenagers in a controlled environment. It was commissioned by 4Learning, the educational programming department, and had been allocated a "graveyard" daytime slot as if to prove its "serious" credentials.

Predictably, however, when filming was completed, Channel 4's ratings-hungry executives decided it had a mainstream winner on its hands, probably because the footage was peppered with yobbish behaviour and expletives. Suddenly, Teen BB became an "engaging, captivating and entertaining series about the world of Britain's teenagers", deserving of "a larger audience". Which means we can all now enjoy this affirmation of teenage life at 10pm every day next week.

Far from being "educational", say the critics, the show - made by Endemol, which produces the adult Big Brother - deliberately sets out to show teenagers having sex on TV in a cynical ploy to boost C4's core under-30 audience.

The mere fact that the four boys and four girls had to share a bedroom calls into question the makers' motives. And the claim that it was commissioned for an obscure educational slot somehow fails to convince.

Media analyst and PR expert Mark Borkowski says: "You can give this whatever PR spin you like. Call it what you will, Channel 4 has created a situation where people behave in a certain way to make a piece of sensational television.

"If this was an experiment, why is it being shown at prime time? And what about the kids? They are likely to be left in the lurch without good advice, and their lives will be made a misery."

The show is almost guaranteed to be a ratings success. Unlike the original BB, in which the viewers vote each week for a housemate to be expelled, Teen Big Brother allows participants to vote for two of their number to leave in the middle of the week. To occupy their time, the housemates, who come from a variety of ethnic and social backgrounds, are set tasks, including unblocking a toilet and playing a computer game which simulates landing a plane.

In a further break from the adult format, cigarettes and alcohol are banned. At the end of the week, the remaining six vote on who should be the winner. He or she will win a "vocational trip of a lifetime", according to Endemol.

In its defence Channel 4 insists the show is a worthwhile experiment and a "challenging learning experience" for the teenagers involved. The sex scene, it says, is "tastefully edited and only a small part of a bigger picture".

Elaine Hackett, the show's executive producer, told me: "What you will see is a rustle under the duvet. It's not like this massive explicit activity that went on for hours and hours - it's a young couple under a duvet.

"To be fair to everybody, you can't say there was sex in the Big Brother house and then not show it. We highlight the fact that there is flirtation and a relationship developing between Jade and Tommy."

Since July, when the show was filmed, Channel 4, realising it has an exclusive on its hands, has tried to gag the housemates and their families, ordering them not to speak to the press.

But, breaking rank, Tommy Wright's mother says her family has been left in "shock". Speaking from her home in Weymouth, Christine Wright says: "We understood the programme was supposed to be educational. When Tommy told me what had happened I was, to say the least, quite shocked. He's really not that sort of boy. Fun-loving, sure, but not someone who sleeps around. I'm surprised Channel 4 allowed this thing to happen - I mean, let's face it, they're still kids and many might think it quite irresponsible to stick them all in a room together.

"There's no way I'll be watching the episode. It's just not the sort of thing a mother would like to see. Quite what the reaction will be when millions of people see it, is something I can't bear thinking about."

How Tommy and Jade come to feel about their 15 minutes of fame remains to be seen.

Brother beyond the pale?

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