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BROTHERLY LOVE September 03 2000 continued from page one... Anyone who has ever watched QVC the shopping channel (for it makes fantastic viewing) will know just how desperate TV has become in the year 2000; not informative, not entertaining, just crude and self-perpetuating. And as the media balloons and swells, it is disproportionately ravenous for fresh meat: identikit boy- and girl- bands in their hundreds, football players-cum-male models, swarms of airtime-castrating cookery show chefs etc etc etc etc. This is where "Big Brother" comes in. As many commentators have noted, the BB house is populated with wannabe TV presenters. Effectively, itıs a documentary about the quest for fame and fortune, with the prison-like enclosure of the studio a fitting preparation for what will be the true trappings of success. In the early days, when Nastyı Nick Bateman ruled the roost with his manipulative cartoon-villain scheming, all this made for rivetting programming. And when the housemates, already paranoid like characters from an Oliver Stone flick, discovered the nature of Nickıs deceipt, the Internet at last came of age in this country. News-bearing e-mails flitted from office desks across Britain, with hundreds of thousands tuning in to watch the aftermath through a tiny RealVideo window that was surely as grainy as the first images transmitted by Logie Baird. On that day, we saw just how potent Web and TV voyeurism can be sexy, scary, surprising - but most of all revealing, because it helps us know ourselves better. Which of us didnıt watch Nick Bateman in awe, shocked that he could be so dastardly, yet secretly knowing that we have ourselves at some point been as bad? And in the year 2000, when weıre better connected than ever before but often bleakly isolated within our own home towns, what better than to spy directly into other peoplesı lives? Sadly, with Nickıs departure, weıve also seen the downside of voyeuristic programming: it can at times be sad, repetitive and mind-numbingly boring. "Big Brother" has now become a competition to find the most innocuous and inoffensive housemate: ironically, the resident least likely to become a TV presenter. Thee reason soaps like "EastEnders" and "Coronation Street" are so popular is that they are fictionalised; we suspend our disbelief and thank ourselves that the same emotional catastrophes donıt befall us. Yet life in the "Big Brother" house has become empty, a reminder of how dull life can get. With the most bubbly participants ejected, the final few weeks are likely to provide the most tedious anti-climax in British televisual history, with everyone trying to out-nice each other: a terribly British phenomenon. And not good entertainment. Still, thumbs up to Endemol and Channel Four for providing us with some of the first non-nostalgic, truly contemporary moments of the new Millennium. Only time will tell whether programme-makers will descend to the ultraviolent spy-TV of "Running Man", "Sliver" or "Network"- whatıs for sure, though, is that "Big Brother" is not the ultimate in voyeuristic TV. And as far as Iım concerned, thatıs no bad thing. Just as long as the shows arenıt boring, Iıll be there, getting my vicarious thrills through the screen. comment on this article e-mail this to a friend start a discussion 
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