Reality Bites

It seems there’s a reality TV show for all seasons at the minute, and just as one ends, another takes its’ place to add another fresh layer of glue to our seats. Not that I’m really all that pushed. I mean, only under the most narrow of stipulations would I ever watch X-Factor. Under severe duress, for example, in a Deer Hunter-style gauntlet, or if I’m washing dishes and my hands are too sudded up to change the channel. Under such a situation (the washing up thing, not the bandana-clad Russian roulette) did I catch a few minutes of its’ debut show. Unsurprisingly, I was horrified.

First of all, an audience for the first round of the competition? That bit generally known for poor deluded gaums revealing the chasmic discrepancy between what they think sound like and what the rest of the aurally-competent know to be true? It’s bad enough there are millions at home laughing without them having to deal with it in real time, with restless bloodlusters turning on an emotional sixpence when  the girl who reckons she’s Tina Turner couldn’t hit a note with a homing missile, or when a man develops an unwitting erection while singing.

No doubt this decision has been inspired by that other Simon Cowell-infused arsefest, Britain’s Got Talent, where audience disembowling of contestants is as integral a part of the recipe as pathos-laden ugly duckling singers and the tears of judges. I’ve only seen fifteen minutes of the show directly, during which a dog tapdanced to a Fred Astaire, prompting Cowell to claim it was “the best thing I’ve ever seen”. Which must have left Sinitta a bit put out.

Though while the histrionic mess that is Britain’s Got Talent or X-Factor seems to showing no signs of stopping, at least one show of the reality stable is being put out to pasture. Big Brother may have been the Pandora who opened the reality TV box, from hence all manner of evil has since come, but I don’t feel quite as much hostility to the source as most people do. What began as a kind of grand social experiment may have been co-opted by the tabloid mainstream in extremis, but amidst all the controversy it stirred up it could provide some fascinating TV, and like it or not it has shaped the decade in all manner of ways.

Reality TV, such as it is, may not be perfect, and it’s merely a spoke in the wheel that’s been at the height of it’s powers for a while but will revolve agin to be replaced by some other staple of programming. But until that happens, the reality genre will rope you in one way or another. Even me.

For you see, much as I loathe the likes of X-Factor, I absolutely love Strictly Come Dancing. As someone who suspects they may have been a 50′s song and dance man in a past life, Strictly hits all my buttons. The fact that the show is based around learning a skill from scratch, a bloody difficult one at that, appeals to me too, as opposed to X-Factor, where the point seems to be a year’s worth of fame for someone and ritual humiliation for everyone else.

The other thing I love about it though is the effect it has on men. While dudes can use Cheryl Cole as a pretext, or indeed the only text, to watch X-Factor, watching a show about the supposedly unmanly field of dancing is a much harder man sell. And yet, the amount of  soldiers, carpenters and other such ‘ard grafters I know who watch the show would truly surprise you. In one particular case, I heard a story of workmen in a hotel asking the barman to “turn on that ‘oul ballroom shite”, as if the swears would mask his love of the magic of dance. He was fooling nobody, of course.

Next week Strictly starts it’s seventh run up as far as Christmas, thus sorting out my Saturday evening viewing for a few months to come. Seems nobody is beyond the bite of the reality bug.