Big Brother: Diary Room UNCUT

 

I’m going to keep this one really short as I don’t want to add too much to the already numerous reviews of this seminal piece of TV, nor do I want to be instrumental in turning this blog into another reality TV bitch-off. Therefore this will hopefully be the first and last time I personally write about this pop-culture gulag we seem to love to hate so much…

That said, I do want to really briefly talk about the late night ‘Diary Room UNCUT’ edition that I watched last night in my hotel room.

‘Uncut’ is a tag that advertisers and programmers like to use to lure us into thinking there will be footage not suitable for the normal broadcast contained within. This is not true. This is Big Brother; when you’ve already screened the footage of a Rotherham slag and her romantic encounter with a wine bottle there is very little left that could fit under the banner ‘not suitable for normal broadcast.’ Bar the occasional racist limmerick, there is nothing that these voyeuristic hawkers won’t show to garner more ratings, therefore the subtitle ‘Uncut’ is a very large misnomer.

Unless, that is, ‘Uncut’ simply refers to the footage they haven’t already used yet. The pauses, the yawns, the dull conversations… and in that case ‘Uncut’ is technically correct, although will never live up to it’s lurid promise.

All the above is irrelevant, though, as the show is very clearly ‘cut.’ See those little shots of the corridor changing colour, or the focus shifts to cameras in the garden? We editors call those cutaways and we use them to hide edits within the same shot. Big Brother Diary Room Uncut is the reality TV equivilent of an Oliver Stone movie; it is remastered fact and trimmed truth and I find the use of the word ‘UNCUT’ in the title baffling. It’s like calling the show ‘Big Brother Diary Room with No Strobes’ and then having half an hour of epileptic-baiting flashing lights.

I can only assume that the creators of said show simply decided that ‘UNCUT’ was a great and provocative title, and didn’t give any thought to the dictionary, relative or generally accepted meaning of the word. In any instance.

Next week they start the new spin-off show: Big Brother in the Nude. Contrary to the title it won’t feature any nudity, or indeed anything about Big Brother. Instead it’s a bit of footage of the outside of a house in Limmerick, and then a music video by Sister Sledge. Fucking great TV.