The next Celebrity Big Brother? It’ll be alt-right on the night | Life and … – The Guardian

Katie Hopkins entering the Celebrity Big Brother house in 2015. Photograph: Ian West/PA

Barely four minutes after the conclusion of the most recent Celebrity Big Brother, I am intrigued to see a rash of headlines speculating as to who will be in the summer line-up. Previously a once-a-year-event, Celebrity Big Brother now appears to be a rolling facility a sort of career spa to which celebrities can repair to take the waters when recovering from the other formats. Just as the jet set use the seasons as a verb to describe the migration from Gstaad to the Amalfi coast, there are now people who winter in the jungle and summer in Elstree.

And yet, is it not time to give these shows a thermonuclear modern boost? In short: when is reality television going to accept its new repertory company, and formally embrace the alt-right? Admittedly it has dipped in the toe of its hazmat suit Katie Hopkins has done a grand tour of the formats. But in an age where the most prominent political satire on TV is a panel show onits 52nd series, I should like to see a dedicated far-right edition of Celebrity Big Brother. Or Im a Celebrity. Or Celebrity Survivor. Or any of them, really, except Love Island.

There are easily enough characters available now, and Im sure the last thing they would be is too chicken to bring their ideas to an even wider audience. Hopkins could be persuaded back, obviously. Then theres Milo Yiannopoulos, and that Paul Joseph Watson who broadcasts to Infowars from Battersea, of all hilarious locations. Another tweedily bespectacled one popped up on Channel 4 news this week with comments so silly that I yearned to see him forced to repeat them at Tribal Council and not get picked off. And Im sure you could get a couple of the American ones over.

When a reality star was elected US president, there was a sense that the genre had no mountains left to climb. Yet given how well suited the relentless attention-seeking of the far right is to reality TV, perhaps that is not the case. People say that sunlight is the best disinfectant, but the actual best disinfectant is being cloistered in a McMansion or on an island, and forced to fight and scheme your way to dominance while everyone at home shrieks at how unbelievably ghastly you are. Please just picture Milo having to cooperate with Katie in a raft-building challenge, and tell me there wouldnt be tears before bedtime. And tears of laughter for us, of course. If only British TV commissioning editors werent so serially frightened. At some point they should at least consider confronting the age, before aneven worse one comes along.

More:
The next Celebrity Big Brother? It'll be alt-right on the night | Life and ... - The Guardian

Related Posts

Comments are closed.