The BBC has just confirmed that this year’s final will screen on Sunday June 7, rather than Wednesday June 10 as expected.

The episode will see the remaining two candidates challenged to create and market a brand new box of chocolates – with brand new flavours. Here’s hoping we see some ‘blue sky thinking’ here, with proposed taste sensations like foie gras and quiche appearing on that white board.

“Big Brother is getting tougher this year!” announced a slightly jaded-looking Davina McCall at the outset, and one might have hoped for a return to the raw, urgent ethos of the first series as opposed to the more prefabricated and rather too easy-going (aside from the oleaginous Stuart and hyped-up, highly strung Penny) spectacle of last year. However Davina’s statement was immediately a little hard to square with the new flashy house set in the environs of Hertfordshire’s Elstree studios, complete with swimming pool and pebble duvet covers.

Big Brother stood out as an entity very much aware of itself and its viewers and as such the induction of the new group of guinea pigs and the ease in which they slotted into their predesignated roles seemed to connote a certain cynicism and the vague feeling that this time around the show was taking the piss – selecting contestants with little individuality who could be easily flattened out into banal archetypes. Kate was the love interest and unlike Mel, her audition tape had already covered the bases that she was a “girl’s girl” who appealed to the boys thus immediately signifying her as a strong candidate for the eventual winner. Spencer was the laconic alpha male, Jonny the comic relief, Alison the larger-than-life “character” à la Caggy or Bubble (thus ensuring her early eviction). Adele came across as another Anna in the making, astute, self-possessed and determined not to sell herself out to the cameras and upon viewing Jade’s audition video it was obvious that the producers were going for the Helen “dim but lovable” gambit once more. The fact that the two obvious mould-breakers – Sandy the dour Civvy Street personal shopper and Lynne, the mature student who transmogrified into a carping fishwife with a drink in her hand – were also the least likeable did not inspire confidence. Whilst the first week did offer some points of interest – Sunita being the first British contestant to leave the house of her own accord, a budding romance developing between Adele and Lee, and Jade’s hysteria upon realising that her housemates would be deliberating whether to boot out herself or Lynne was an uneasy taste of things to come – it was strangely devoid of the similar curtain-twitching appeal of its predecessors. Big Brother 3‘s initial defining quality was its ironed-out blandness.

Following on from Claire and Josh, Sunita’s replacement Sophie brought similar gravitas to the household, establishing herself as being basically “nice” but not much more than attractive sofa decoration. Nevertheless, the surprise dual departures did appear to kick-start events in the house. Male model Alex initiated a one-man crusade for cleanliness and proper hygiene, delivering a speech that most students would have heard when one of their new housemates turned out to be a complete control freak, and one which only served to alienate his fellow contestants. Effectively distanced from the others and finding solace in an oddly matched friendship with Sandy, the fastidious, pedantic Alex soon developed a bizarre comedic appeal in his clashes with the others. Fault-lines and cliquey relationships seemed to be forming in a similar manner to the initial boys vs girls divide early in the first series. Jonny and his band of happy campers (PJ, Kate, Spencer and Alison) on one side and a more cerebral faction (Sandy, Alex and Adele) on the other, with Lee and Jade floating in between as nominations preyed heavily on the housemates’ minds.

It was gratifying to see that instead of blithely booting out the most fascinating housemate up for eviction as had been done with Sada and Penny in previous years, the British populace exercising some savvy judgement and sacrificing Alison on the altar in order to exacerbate conflict in the house. Whilst it was sad to say goodbye to the jovial Alison, it was intriguing to witness the effect her departure had on the fractured community. Alex and Sandy gaining ground, and the realisation on the part of Spencer, Jonny and Kate that their clique might not be as popular as they thought.

If a primary concern of the second series was to entice the housemates into having sex hence the presence of the “den” (brilliantly parodied in Dead Famous, where the contestants are assigned the task of building their own Indian sweatbox), then this time Big Brother moved to sow seeds of conflict between the group, unveiling the most striking innovation of the third series. Derived from the American version of Big Brother, the “divide” split the house into two separate “poor” and “rich” areas, where one group would make to do with outside washing and cooking facilities as well as basic rations, and the other would live in comparative luxury on a £400 shopping budget. Despite the somewhat arbitrary nature of the selection process (the first five housemates to throw a ball through a basketball net – followed by games of darts and musical chairs), here at last was the gruelling test in group dynamics so sorely lacking from the second series, splitting up the established cliques and forcing the housemates to form new alliances as they survived the week.

A few weeks down the line, Big Brother‘s offer to remove the divide by setting the group a task of answering trivia questions was another well-intentioned conceit, obliging the housemates to actually work to achieve their objectives. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the inmates on the poor side who came across the best, being united in adversity and obliged to pool their resources. Certainly, the bandana-clad Alex appeared to be in his element during his “poor” week preparing chickpeas and tending to the outside stove. Sandy, however, was singularly underwhelmed at being stuck on the rich side with his enemies Jonny and Kate. Increasingly disillusioned with the banality of his housemates and the whole Big Brother experience, he took to the house roof and made his great escape. Despite being a forthright presence in the house, nothing quite became Sandy as much as his exit. Either a brilliantly conceived stunt or sheer shallow attention seeking, Sandy’s escape duly highlighted the largely unexciting events in the house so far, reaching a nadir when Jade drunkenly pleasured PJ under the covers in the “poor” bedroom. Compare and contrast with Paul and Helen’s more gentle, credible and palatable flirtations during the previous series. With allegations across the tabloids that the great taboo of sexual relations had finally been broken in the third series, it was a further depressing sign of Big Brother pandering to the lowest common denominator.

With Sandy’s flight and the ejection of Lee (easily the most nondescript housemate), BB3‘s assortment of dramatis personae was further extended by the arrival of the speciously upper class Tim. A genuine product of the Thatcher generation, no sooner had Tim had his feet under the table than the British public had found another figure to love to hate. As Tim sat in the diary room delivering his party political broadcasts to the nation, he came across as self-deluded and petulant. Here indeed was a housemate we could legitimately dislike purely due to his personality rather than behaviour amplified by the editing team. If BB2‘s Stuart had at least been a loving family man, then Tim lacked any such redeeming qualities. The fourth week was mainly focused on the rival elements in the house, as the “rich” and “poor” schism came to a head. The “champions” of each side, Spencer and Alex, faced eviction and fingers were poised on mobiles for the hottest head-to-head since Amma and Paul. Spencer, who had curried favour with his sly sense of humour and rebellious streak (being the first housemate to receive a disciplinary “strike” from Big Brother), was the one to go. True to the semi-iconoclastic status constructed for him during his time in the house, he proved to be an endearingly uncooperative, monosyllabic interviewee for Davina. However, with the clash of the titans now over, there seemed to be little point in continuing to watch as Alex now appeared to have a clear run. Events in the house were however to take a darker, shocking turn.

The unprecedented faction-led bitchiness of series three came to a height during the fifth week with Adele and Jade forming an unholy trinity with Tim and singling out Sophie for some horrifically petty nastiness. Coming into the house at a later stage had immediately put Sophie at a disadvantage with no discernible game plan. Never properly accepted into the community as a whole, she had instead formed individual relationships, predominantly with Lee, which had clearly alienated Adele. After Lee’s eviction, Sophie was an isolated figure in the group with no clear friends to cement her position but some definite enemies. Having previously regarded Sophie from a viewing perspective as “the dull one who came in after Sunita”, it was genuinely chastening and sobering to realise that this was in fact a real human being with real feelings who had committed no offence other than to be herself in a game show and who deserved so much better than living in this unpleasant environment.

Once again, BB3 had demonstrated that there are limits to viable voyeurism and Sophie confessing her unhappiness to Jonny in the garden was easily the most distressing moment in the entire run of Big Brother. As Kate nobly stepped in to sort out matters and Sophie and Jade appeared to resolve their differences, it was heartening that Sophie so effectively managed to break the mould of previous intruder housemates and complete her time in the house as a genuinely engaging participant who inadvertently changed the course of the entire third series, precipitating a wave of antipathy towards Jade, Adele and Tim. Although being voted out when up against Jonny, Sophie emerged butterfly-like from the Big Brother cocoon, coming across as pleasant, demure and elegant and her post-eviction interview was one of the best ever. For once, the crowd’s cries of “Get Jade Out!” which, brilliantly, was overheard by the housemates, seemed genuinely righteous.

Before we move on, a few words about Jade Goody. Did she slip through the psych-check net, or was she caught? Jade’s early demeanour and conduct, treading a taut line between endearing immaturity and being plainly aggravating, had failed to win the affection of the viewers leading to her facing the housemates’ vote alongside Lynne. Her subsequent histrionics was the first disturbing warning sign that BB3 would be a bumpy ride. Why had the producers selected a contestant who was rather obviously insufficiently equipped to deal with the trauma of eviction? In the heightened atmosphere of the Big Brother house, Jade has of course been somewhat demonised. Her alcohol-fuelled antics would not look out of place inside any nightclub. Her sustained spiteful diatribes against Sophie, egged on by Alex and Adele’s laughter, appeared to establish Jade as anxious for acceptance by her peers and essentially too childish and dumb to be taken seriously as a force for malevolence.

Jade’s coarseness could be pinned down to an alleged background only glimpsed at in Mike Leigh films, and her overall outlook hinted at a side of British culture best glossed over, but her overall unpalatable personality was thoroughly eclipsed by tabloid journalists out for easy point scoring. The Sun’s Dominic Mohan’s scornful highlighting of Jade’s “porcine” visage duly provoked many broadsheet counter-meditations on the unacceptable face of voyeurism. A walking mass of contradictions and extremities, Jade was stupid but shrewd, pretty but grotesque, overweight yet comfortable with her body shape, ignorant but often surprisingly thoughtful, vocal but never acknowledged, good and bad. In a rare moment of reflection in the diary room, Jade eschewed the use of “tictacs” but instead maintained that she has presented all aspects of her personality and people could either like her or not. In a strictly qualified way, Jade’s “game plan” apparently paid dividends, being greeted by cheers and a hug from Davina on her final night eviction. Whether or not she will look back through the videos and learn anything worthwhile from the experience remains to be seen. Jade bestrides BB3 and will remain rightly or wrongly its most multi-dimensional and perversely charismatic contestant.

With concerns over the baptism of fire Jade might face upon eviction, it was interesting to see the media backtrack and switch its attention to Adele. Attentive viewers would have noted her sounding out her housemates’ opinions of each other and then whispering into the ears of her “minions” Alex and Jade. Dubbed “the black widow” on Internet forums, it is difficult to decide whether Adele was genuinely playing a spider’s stratagem or honestly vacillating between contradictory feelings regarding her housemates. Yet she had already accrued sufficient unpopularity to guarantee her eviction when she was nominated. With the possibility that there may be no other chance to evict Adele before the final week, the public got what the public wanted.

Almost like a Christian thrown to the lions, she stepped out of the house that Friday to be greeted by a hate-filled chorus of opprobrium. Another desperately uncomfortable moment to relegate Big Brother to the status of a sick pantomime, it should however be noted that, unlike Mel and Elizabeth in previous years, the contempt shown for Adele’s magnified in-house conduct was not entirely without foundation. Undeniably, the jeering was totally out of proportion and Adele’s evictee status was chiefly as Jade’s scapegoat, but still her role in the bullying of Sophie should not be forgotten. It should also be remembered that during her fracas with the “minging”, varucca-stricken Jade, she was the first housemate to explicitly threaten (sincerely or otherwise) physical violence – “I’ll fuckin’ deck her!” – upon another. You reap what you sow. It was nevertheless a relief to watch Adele apparently unfazed by it all during her interview, conducting herself with dignity. Easily the most calculating (and therefore the most interesting) participant, Adele’s major failing would seem to have been a Nick-like overestimation of her own cleverness – her alleged game plan would’ve been sound enough, if only BB was not being televised. Certainly, in view of the public perception of her, the sight of Adele discussing Othello’s Iago with Alex shortly prior to getting the boot was pleasingly ironic.

Sadly, with the focused and intriguing Adele gone, BB3 had lost any kind of dramatic impetus. The divide was arbitrarily removed the day after Adele left, resulting in an utter loss of import in the housemates’ activities. The task where two housemates agreed to be up for eviction (decided by the drawing of straws) in exchange a video message from their loved ones was utterly pathetic, given that they would shortly be seeing their families anyway and came across as a gimmicky stay of execution for Jade. It was hard to really care as PJ was the next contestant to be spat out of the Big Brother machinery since the aspiring solicitor had made precious little genuine contribution. His sharpness with Jade was later overshadowed by Alex’s drunken vindictiveness and the assertion that he had “rumbled” Adele, being the first to nominate her, was spurious. It was in fact Alison who had first posited the possibility of a duplicitous Adele in her eviction interview. With Jonny now running the show with drinking games, his habit of manhandling the two women in the house disquietingly suggested a closet misogyny that went far beyond a joke. If anything, his mordant bleakness whilst interned on the poor side had been rather more amusing. Alex and Kate were chiefly content to Follow The Van and Jade was now relegated to a faintly grating background noise, comprehensively ridiculed by her housemates. As in previous years, the final few weeks were characterised by a perfunctory, disengaged air. The sole entertaining aspect of waiting for it all to end was to see Tim pontificating in the diary room knowing he would shortly get his comeuppance. When Tim was finally evicted however, his apparent ability to laugh at himself when presented with chest-shaving footage and his hollow bravado facing the booing crowd did merit at least some grudging respect.

It was a welcome relief as the final night finally arrived as it had all become frankly tedious. Whilst one might have expected Alex to have attracted the “girlie” vote that previously secured victories for Craig and Brian, the identity of the winner had, in retrospect, been well signposted. Whereas Alex, Jonny and Jade had all experienced difficulties in the house that influenced their outside popularity, Kate had remained stable throughout, coping with being on the poor side for three weeks with good humour, winning respect for being willing to sacrifice her place on the rich side to reunite the group and becoming a progressively stronger candidate. Her presence in the house somewhat analogous to that of a female Craig, the £70K once more went to the most easily accessible, least ambiguous housemate. Sadly, no one in the third series has truly matched the charisma of previous leading players such as Nick, Anna, Brian, Helen or even second division contenders like Sada, Tom, Narinder or Dean. It seems overall that on the basis of personal appeal, the real winners of BB3 would have to be the likes of Alison, Sophie (who both emerged from the house with good reputations intact) and of course Sunita, who had the good sense to wise up and get out fast.

It would no doubt be ridiculous to compare this run of Big Brother to say, the rotten to the core sensibility of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s infamous film Salo – 120 Days of Sodom, which pushes boundaries of good taste and challenges through alleged allegory issues of audience complicity and voyeurism played out in a confined setting. Yet in its own circumscribed way, BB3 has provided thoroughly shallow, queasy viewing, trading almost exclusively on the grim spectacle of friction and full throttle misanthropy. Amidst the glitter and histrionics of the tawdry final night, it’s too easy to forget the sight of Sophie reduced to tears by in-house bitching, an inebriated Jade being tricked into stripping naked by her housemates and the unsavoury undercurrent of Jonny’s drunken horseplay. This series has indeed offered precious little moments of genuine psychological insight beyond fuelling the fire of media manipulation and misrepresentation, highlighting the nasty underbelly of “reality” TV. The fact that this review ultimately constitutes more of a chronological overview as opposed to being genuinely analytical is telling in itself.

It is impossible to deny that Big Brother has been a magnificent achievement for Channel 4. If the first series was about setting out the stall, benefiting hugely from its comparative freshness, then that’s not to say that the follow-ups didn’t offer anything of merit. The second series showcased the virtues of generally positive collectivity and the third depicted the pretence of community amidst thinly disguised tension and nastiness. It’s difficult to conjecture what a fourth run would genuinely bring to the format. All angles and possible trajectories for a community of housemates have now been comprehensively explored. Davina is allegedly thinking of moving on to new projects. Let’s hope they have the sense to quit while they’re ahead.

In the months leading up to Christmas, I’d noticed some changes in the office. My colleagues in charge of opening the post were no longer there. As I ventured out during the morning coffee run, I would see them creeping furtively along the corridor wearing pairs of sinister rubber gloves. “What are those for?” I enquired. “Oh, Anthrax.”

As I doled out the Nescafé into designated mugs, I morbidly pondered over the plausibility of my workplace being a viable target for eco-terrorism. What next; the resurgence of Protect and Survive? It wouldn’t take much to wipe out the world, let alone an office. A white-coated scientist drops a test tube of liquid. People board planes, trains and automobiles. The pandemic begins. Millions are killed. Carolyn Seymour, Ian McCulloch and Lucy Fleming struggle to rebuild a civilisation devolved back to the feudal age. If Survivors was the product of Terry Nation’s preoccupation with social Darwinism and dystopian futureshock, then it was also television drama at its most unnervingly prescient. However, as the mock documentarySmallpox 2002 demonstrates, such an apocalyptic scenario is no longer a science fiction hack’s flight of fancy, it is science fact.

From the provocative Ghostwatch to the somewhat laboured agit prop leanings of The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black Black Oil, I’d become accustomed to programme-makers’ utilisation of the faux-verite documentary style and manipulation of the assumptions made towards this mode of address in order to make a point, frivolous, socio-political or otherwise. What ultimately demarcated Smallpox 2002 from such prosaic debates about the realism of documentary and dramatic reconstruction was its avoidance of naïve polemicising.

A simple but effective composite of narrative techniques was employed by the producers to tell a chillingly plausible tale of a deliberately engineered worldwide outbreak of a communicable disease. Despite its broad scope, the documentary wisely focused on the emergency responses to such a crisis, and gained much of its impetus and power by highlighting the discrepancies between public health policies and individual perspectives. Central to this aim was the inclusion of a video diary of an ill-fated teenage boy and the effects of the epidemic on his mother and sister as they isolated themselves within the four walls of their estate flat. I had initially considered this to be a vaguely satirical touch, a tip of the cap to the documentary in all its forms. Yet this somewhat hackneyed element coupled with scenes of rioting, strikes and shootings in the street ably portrayed a typical human response to the encroaching disaster, which sure enough was in stark contrast to the “required” response desired by the authorities.

Despite the presence of cosmetic boils on the anonymous victims’ faces, Smallpox 2002largely eschewed shock horror tactics, though its possible potential on corruptible minds in need of a cause remained terrifyingly implicit throughout the restrained proceedings. As the programme moved on to address the means by which the authorities would work to eradicate the epidemic, contemplating the dilution of vaccine stocks to increase availability, Smallpox 2002 was at its height. Using the concept of a “silent weapon” as a departure point, this was a showcase of seriousness and intelligence; and an utterly credible and compelling contextualisation of that old chestnut of human idealism versus realpolitik pragmatism – the perpetual clash between ethical dilemma and economic forces.

With no discernible reassurance from a Nick Ross-style coda and a subsequent Newsnightfeature speculating on the preparedness or otherwise of the authorities, I couldn’t help but feel decidedly furtive back in the office the morning after the night before. My mind was filled withInvaders-style paranoia. On 11 September 2001, the inconceivable became a raw and horrifying reality. That reality can transmute into new forms with biochemical weaponry. But please don’t have nightmares. Do sleep well.

There’s nothing we can do anyway.

Saturday night, Saturday night… and I’m sitting in front of the television, recalling a conversation with a colleague at work. “Everything came back in the ’90′s, so the decade never really had a style of its own,” I was informed. So I Love the Nineties was always destined to be problematic. Not in terms of execution of course. We’re used to the arbitrary exclusion of items we feel sum up an era more succinctly than those the programme-makers have chosen, though one can imagine the spectacle of an unimaginative pundit drooling over “having an old friend for dinner with a nice Chianti” or emulating Whitney’s warbling over always loving Kevin Costner and breathe a collective sigh of relief that these did not materialise. The problem lies more in the programme’s basic raison d’être.

The great strength of the ’70s and ’80s shows were their affectionate pop bluster, looking at our shared past and where necessary, exploding our assumptions about “the good old days” by revealing that certain fragments (Sodastream, Cabbage Patch dolls) were every bit as crap in their contemporaneous contexts as they are now. Many of the cultural talking points of the last decade remain too fresh in our collective consciousness for any significant reappraisal or reinvention as kitsch. How is it possible to trawl nostalgically back through a decade that was itself so intertwined with notions of irony, parody, revival and retro-rehabilitation? Now I’ve got fond memories of 1994 – the year of A-levels, leaving home, starting at university. Though suffused in an alcohol-fuelled haze, my recollections of student life are abundantly clear so the programme did not engender rose-tinted remembrances or wistful trips down memory lane. There’s scarcely any warm glow to be gained from the programme anymore so why bother? But since I am watching, let’s examine BBC Manchester’s take on 1994 without further ado – after all, it’s party time and not one minute we can lose.

“Britpop” was one of those nebulous terms, like “Cool Britannia”, I never much cared for. Touted as a bright new broadside against the dominance over grunge and indie by America, the work of Blur, Oasis, Supergrass and Suede (linked by the media with The Kinks and the Small Faces) did not so much hinge on anti-Americanism but rather revealed the British tendency to cling to traditional icons whilst endeavouring to innovate. Recounting the saga of Blur vs. Oasis was an entertaining piece – reminding us that when Country House beat Roll With It to number one it was ultimately a pyrrhic victory, yet respect was shown to both bands. If excerpts from the Parklife video showcased Damon and co’s keen sense of irony and playfulness then the equal emphasis given to backstage belligerence and the wonderful Wonderwall admirably encapsulated Liam Gallagher’s budding duality. Where did I stand on this all-important question? To lay my cards fully on the table, as much as I appreciated both bands, actually I spent most of the mid-1990′s listening to ’60s/’70s/’80s music at the student union discos. Ah, nostalgia …

There’s not much that can be usefully added about Four Weddings and a Funeral other than to echo Johnny Vegas’ spot-on summation that the film was made by the chattering classes about the chattering classes. The raw poignancy of the funeral scene atones for this however, and Four Weddings was indeed that rare thing in 1994: a British hit movie amidst a slew of multiplex dross, demonstrating that British cinema could be a commercially viable proposition in the international film market. There’s certainly a valid argument that without the success of Four Weddings, we might never have got Trainspotting, and therefore I’m happy to cut Hugh and Andie some slack.

Having spent the bulk of the programme regaling us with memories of such frivolous ephemera as the Wonderbra and Tommy Hilfiger fashions, the arrest and prosecution of OJ Simpson seemed somewhat incongruous. Ice T (one of the series’ most reliable contributors) was on top form here, reminding us that the biggest drawcard during the “trial of the century” was not Orenthal James himself, but the charisma and verbal dexterity of defence lawyer Johnny Cochrane. Rather too complex an issue to be adequately addressed by the programme, the contemporary comparisons made between the trial and the Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittal of white police officers of the assault of Rodney King introduces debates about the disparities between races, the invocation of celebrity status, the institutional procedures of the police force and the inequalities of the legal system that the subsequent “media circus” (thank you, Sarah Cawood) of OJ’s trial may have endeavoured to conceal. Much of the defence’s emphasis did indeed lie in arresting officer Mark Fuhrman’s inappropriate use of the word “nigger” – sadly, a rather more under-used word throughout the trial was “Nicole”.

Swiftly moving on to more trivial matters, the crispy pages of Loaded magazine saw the neutered New Man reclaim his balls. This was a publication always shrouded in a layer of irony that suggested us blokes were all so modern and self-aware we recognised the macho tomfoolery therein for what it was, but James Brown waxing lyrical about the “champagne and cocaine” lifestyle that came with the editorship of the mag perpetuated the old adage that boys will be boys after all. Nevertheless, if the lads thought they were going to have it all their own way, their ladette flipsides would soon manifest themselves. The presence of Eva Herzegova confidently asserting her sexuality, the apotheosis of Elizabeth Hurley and jumping, gyrating Whigfield acolytes hinted at a nascent Girl Power that will presumably be explored in greater detail in I Love 1996.

And so, we’ve had The Simpsons and The X Files, let’s look back at yet another show still in production … let’s make Friends. Once again, the top-notch selection of clips we’ve become accustomed on I Love was in evidence as we witnessed David Schwimmer, Matt Le Blanc and Matthew Perry all looking alternately bored and uncomfortable being interviewed by Gaby Roslin. The fact that this segment focused on little more than the theme tune and Jennifer Aniston’s hairdo spoke volumes about the stunningly shallow nature of the programme as a whole. If M*A*S*H and Cheers reached high watermarks of intelligently written American ensemble sitcom (even The Golden Girls had genuine pathos from time to time), then Friends‘ slickness can be very neatly equated with its utter charmlessness.

Finally, after its coverage of Reservoir Dogs just two weeks ago, it seemed that I Love the Nineties was beginning to resemble a Tarantino fest, as once again we have the pundits and gratifyingly bit-players from Pulp Fiction lining up to praise the director’s deconstruction of cinematic convention through the presentation of violence as primarily comic in form, stylised dialogue and interrogation of the hollow façade of machismo. Talented Tarantino might have been, but original he certainly was not. Nevertheless, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny’s raid of the coffee shop remains one of the funniest openings to any movie, and there’s much wry cynicism present as Uma Thurman’s character regales John Travolta with her memories of starring in the tragically undeveloped pilot Fox Force Five, five foxy chicks who were a force to be reckoned with. Despite being sassy, provocative and generally worthwhile, Pulp Fiction crucially lacks a core depth that genuinely draws me to engage with its characters and the milieu they inhabit. Still, one Pulp Fiction is worth a dozen Jurassic Parks or Forrest Gumps, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who’s cool enough to posit Jackie Brown as being Quentin’s finest.

It was always highly unlikely that I Love the Nineties would come up with a fresh slant on the established format and so it was just a matter of whether the individual programmes would produce some diverting material. As perfunctory and workmanlike as this series is, I Love 1994 was one of the better efforts so far and does exactly what it says on the tin. So let’s not be too harsh if Thelma and Louise, Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves and Marcus Tandy fail to turn up to the party and just see things through their natural course. We’ve all invested too much time in the I Love strand to give up now.

Then again, we could always bring out the Gimp…

Despite the superficial shift from the stripped-down heightened aesthetic of the original series to the more stylised shag pad environment this summer, it seems that on the whole we’re quite happy to sit down to watch more of the same. Unlike other reviewers, I do work in an office with a water cooler and there at least Big Brother 2 has been a palpable hit. Brian, Narinder, Stuart, Amma and Bubble provoking just as much debate and controversy as Nick, Mel, Darren, Claire and Craig, and so far it has been enjoyable to trace the evolution from Sada, Caroline and Anna to the eccentric, exuberant Penny, feisty, forthright Narinder and calm, capable Elizabeth. Isn’t it intriguing that just like the first series, the women are so much more multifaceted and interesting than the blokes?

Much of Big Brother‘s potential is of course derived from its dramatis personae than its actual structural conventions. Round the clock web access and live E4 coverage is all very well but overall the onus is upon those lucky 11 to interact and upon the programme-makers to ensure those interactions make for arresting television. As noted during the first series, a key factor in Big Brother‘s success lies in its malleability. The 11 contestants are no longer three-dimensional individuals, but have become fuzzily defined editorial creations whose actions can be interpreted and adapted to suit the preferences of both viewers and editors. “Your bad points are noted, put away, brought out and accounted for on nomination day,” observed a distressed Narinder in the diary room, suggesting that she and her fellow inmates may in fact be somewhat less attuned to the programme’s format than one might have expected.

It must have seemed like a road to ratings gold therefore, when whilst cosily ensconced with Brian in the girls’ bedroom for a late-night gossip, Narinder figuratively fingered winking Stuart as a possibly “dangerous” contender out to eliminate his rivals. Since tried and trusted formulae do work, then why not use them again? Certainly the “arsehole” incident with Penny appeared to set alarm bells ringing in the heads of his housemates, securing his place on the nominations list. Having sat stony-faced observing his fellow contestants, he later sealed his fate in the jacuzzi, attempting to high-handedly excise Amma’s contributions to a conversation between the guys. In contrast to “more cunning than a pack of foxes” agent provocateur Nick however, Stuart has come across as a very straightforward individual, not genuinely given to underhand personal dealings, but with a rather off-putting authoritarian streak and propensity for alcohol-fuelled offensiveness, acting as an injured party when someone calls him on it. “I did not give you permission to speak to me like that,” he intoned somewhat piously to Penny. Clearly C4 were happy to give this spa-side spat exaggerated significance and build it up as “high drama” but as in all genuine human relationships, isolated moments such as this are no true reflection of what two people really think of each other. “I don’t want to be misrepresented,” insisted Stuart as he tried to make an admittedly facile and unpersuasive apology to Amma, being comforted in the den by Elizabeth and Dean. Sorry, mate, Channel 4′s editors seem to have done a pretty good job of that already.

Despite the C4 broadcasts also revealing Stuart’s flipside as a loving husband and father, it seemed this was not enough to stop an amazing 86% of the voting public (about 900,000 phone calls) chucking him out. In spite of wife Sian admitting to “having a giggle at home” at Elizabeth unsubtly flirting with her hubby, Stuart’s post-eviction interview was decidedly nonessential viewing. Certainly in comparison with Penny, he seemed rather cold, charmless and not especially deserving of the screen time lavished upon him here. You genuinely felt that you wanted to stay in the house to see how Brian, Narinder and Amma were reacting to the departure of their bete noire rather than listen to Davina McCall perfunctorily endeavouring to extract the good oil as the Big Brother machine grounded to a temporary halt.

With the departures of two live wires, it remains to be seen whether any further sparks will ignite and kick-start events in the house, which according to the brief five minute update at the end of the eviction interview, appeared to be reaching a relaxed equilibrium. In the end, it was probably in Penny’s own best interests to leave as life in the house seemed to be making her more highly strung with each day. With Stuart’s eviction, one could not help but wonder if a major catalyst for tension had been hastily nipped in the bud. If the Nasty Nick “plot” had developed as a compelling back story amidst the weekly rituals of tasks and nominations and followed through to a lovingly lingering gripping dénouement in the first series, then Big Brother 2 in contrast displays no genuine inclination to embrace the implications of its own “storylines” and “characterisations” to its ultimate detriment. (Though watching Amma’s genuine distress on Thursday night’s programme proved that voyeurism can only be taken so far.) Series two may very well turn out to have some hidden weapons in its arsenal – Josh has so far not delivered on his promises of “nudity, nocturnal activities and naughtiness” but might do so when he and Brian get it together, Narinder may enjoy some more claws-out, camp-as-Christmas bitching sessions with “Hilda” or Elizabeth could reveal her true colours as an arch schemer out for the £70K at all costs – but the disconcerting possibility that this time around Big Brother has shot off its bolts far too early remains all too prevalent.

On balance however, the past week’s Big Brother has ably provided some diverting if ultimately inconsequential viewing that highlights the genuine potential the series has to offer. Pressed under glass for us all to see this week was a microcosm of human emotion. We’ve seen friendship (Narinder and Brian’s often genuinely funny double act), conflict (Stuart and Amma locking verbal swords), trouble at the top (Dean and Elizabeth briefly bemoaning the burden of responsibility as Helen asks the latter if it is possible to bake biscuits in an ovenproof dish) and even glimpses of the grotesque from a cross-dressing Paul and cider-sodden Helen. The programme has once more demonstrated it does not function within any clearly defined idiom, rather reasserting its identity as a melting pot of genres from game show, psychological investigation (nice to see Confidence Lab‘s Dr Sandra Scott again) to pure soap opera, simultaneously reaffirming and subverting the values of each.

Big Brother may not be anything but a human zoo, but at least, to its credit, it doesn’t try to pretend the bars aren’t there.

In the Big Brother house, special arrangements were made for those contestants who wished to cast a vote. Reportedly, the production team was reluctant to allow even this one-way connection to the outside world – not surprising considering the botched job the housemates made of it anyway. Of the 10, three decided not to vote and Helen/Hilda (“What’s a Liberal Democrat?”) used her vote to curry favour with the viewing millions, reasoning that it was worth upsetting the Tories if Labour supporters were on her side come Friday night. Surprisingly, the tactic seemed to work – although a choice between Welsh Helen and English Penny was always going to inspire a somewhat nationalistic mindset – and the Great British Public ejected the most fascinating housemate without having to shift from their sofas. What a let down.

Despite all this frenzied voting activity, like real life, we’re left with little but a return to the status quo in the house (Penny is replaced by Josh, a Hobson’s Choice if ever there was one). And, as heavily predicted, the General Election allowed a return to the status quo back in the House, with a similar reshuffle planned. So what’s new? Well, it’s not quite so spurious to draw parallels between these two most popular of popularity contests if you consider the way in which the media (and by that I mean each concomitant medium) present the experience to us.

In direct comparison to last year, Big Brother 2 is far more available – and in far more consumable forms – than it has ever been. With a clear run of five years in Labour’s second term, surely those at Millbank must be tempted to spend the time learning how to appropriate the Big Brother 2 voting technology and replace the tired old ballot box? Channel 4 bosses, conversely, must be clapping themselves on the back, having stolen the march on BBC1′s interactive Wimbledon service (no pun intended) by getting Big Brother interactive on-line across most of the digital platforms this week. If you can’t motivate the masses to vote, take the vote to them. Early statistics indicated that something in the region of 450,000 poll “hits” were pulled in through Sky’s TV-voting system in the three days before Penny’s walk of shame (accounting for around 38% of the total vote). At 25 pence a go, that’s £100,000 per eviction that Gordon Brown wouldn’t mind seeing a percentage of.

Last year, the only way to enjoy round-the-clock coverage of the Big Brother house required a high-bandwidth internet connection and a lot of patience with a badly-designed website. This year, there’s an embarrassment of riches, tempered by a fair share of glitches. The website is vastly improved (original producer, Victoria Real, under the close watch of Endemol and C4, designed a more intuitive and accessible interface but, for some reason, decided to issue company-wide annual leave on the site’s launch date). However, this year’s early-adopters of technology (those that took the digital shilling) have to be as understanding as their ‘Netcentric cousins while the gremlins in the interactive packages are dispatched. Strangely, the drop-line internet voting system that debuted during Celebrity Big Brother hasn’t carried through to this series, Endemol citing the public’s hostility to a “discontinuous” experience (although another possible explanation is Endemol’s hostility to a disappointing bottom line). Digital viewers, on the other hand, have had to suffer an annoyingly discontinuous experience over on E4, where a heavily edited Big Brother Live audio stream (as libellous and abusive comments are “sound-dipped” to placate the ITC) renders the dialogue between the housemates patchy and incomprehensible at times. (The programme’s web forum, hosted at the C4 site, has generated much discussion about the nature of these censored conversations. Viewers claim they can read the contestants’ lips and can see that many of the exchanges contain neither swearing nor legally dubious comments.) When the interactive services finally launched on Wednesday (although officially two days early), the public had been impatiently waiting nearly a week for them. Funny how promises are moderated and mediated over time, smoothed down by governing bodies and made to seem less radical. For the record, Big Brother Live is actually about 25 minutes behind the web-based streams.

However, it’s significant to note that the digital services launched in week two. Like the spin doctors of politics, the gadgets and gizmos (“push the red active button to vote”, “choose a video stream”, “read Karen Krizanovich’s sex tips for Brian”) are embellishing and, to some degree, concealing the real meat, the real issues. Four video streams (two live, two repeat streams) are offered, alongside a topical “question of the day” yes/no vote (for which viewers must pay to take part). Heavyweight commentators (among them, Vanessa Feltz – ba-boom tish!) have been drafted in to add a running commentary in a strap across the bottom fifth of the screen. But if a week is a long time in politics, it’s an eternity in the Big Brother house. As has been pointed out elsewhere, week one’s task (to keep a bonfire lit for five days round the clock) ensured that there were always two housemates awake (and gossiping) at any one time. Great stuff for those insomniacs viewing the overnight feeds on the digital channel. Week two’s challenge (to memorise first aid techniques and put them into practice) led to the housemates learning by rote from a manual. All conversations were therefore pretty much reduced to question-and-answer testing sessions, hardly stuff to set the tabloids alight or keep the viewers entertained. As Chris Moyles demonstrated on Friday’s The Big Breakfast, one can’t help but be spoiled for choice at 7.30am, flicking between shots of each motionless and dormant bedroom. What use is all this technology if there’s nothing to actually view?

What little of interest that did occur in the house this week made it to the newspapers, as usual. Zammo-lookalike Bubble shaved his head, Beckham style, and hoped for a chance to watch the televised England footy game in Greece. And, er, that’s it. Indeed, The Sun carried no Big Brother 2 stories on either Thursday or Friday. It seems that, football or no football, the producers and press officers are the ones who took their eye off the ball. Even Josh’s late substitution was played badly. E4 viewers watched him wander, nonplussed, into the house from the diary room at 1.30pm on Saturday. The sound, naturally, cut out for the duration.

Instead of feeding stories and news from the house, the press releases are quoting statistics like so many MPs on Newsnight. During week two, Big Brother 2 (on C4) apparently battered the opposition’s ratings (both BBC1′s Ten O’clock News and ITV’s Survivor were the unlucky also-rans). Survivor has retreated, Hague-like, to the backwaters of the schedules. E4′s figures have more than quadrupled since the launch of its 18-hour coverage (eclipsing UK Gold), taking it to a 2.6% audience share. Exactly how many of these viewers remain by the end of Popworld is unconfirmed. Less well-publicised has been the news that Victoria Real is planning to lay off 20% of its staff and that the executive producer of the Big Brother website has jumped ship.

Of course, last time around, the hype-machine was a lot more cautious about the programme. By week two, there was divided, if not indifferent, media interest in the programme (remember those five minute updates on C4? Unthinkable now, eh?) and a propensity towards rumour-mongering that, this year, has been replaced by “human interest” stories (the real lives of the housemates, the sex, the scandal). Like a weasel-faced, media-savvy politician, series two of Big Brother has become less accountable, less likely to apologise for not being “worthy” (no-one really believes that the psychologists are treating the programme as anything other than a freak show), more likely to chin an offending protester. The increased visibility of the contestants is an outsized mirror of the increasingly public representation of government (the childishness, the confessions, the warts and all). It’s fair to say that only the Nasty Nick episodes brought in the big ratings for series one. A nervous breakdown by Penny might have done the same for series two. Now we’ll never know – but how would it have served us as viewers, anyway? A distraction? Something to worry about? Or a video stream of same-old same-old which, although we choose to believe the illusion of interactivity we are presented, continues indifferently onward?

So, as Tony Blair returned to Downing Street on Friday morning, the housemates woke up to another day of glorious sunshine, unaware of the electorate outside or, indeed, any message they might be sending to it. All’s well in the country, at least for the government and their press officers, yet there is clearly voter apathy and a sense of discomfort. When all’s well in the Big Brother house, the contestants sit out on the decking and sunbathe, listless and bored. The production team must be praying that the viewers don’t begin to feel the same way. So much for the feelgood factor.

1985 – the year my voice broke. Well, not quite, but definitely the year I started to feel the first pangs of pre-pubescent lust, indulging in clandestine kisses with Louise Meadows under the oak tree in the village cricket green.

For me, 1985 was the year where playground politics began to transform into teenage tribalism and I sat struggling to reconcile these new-found feelings whilst pouring over my Panini sticker album collection and voraciously reading DC Comics and Choose Your Own Adventure books. It was also the year when the schoolchildren of my Buckinghamshire village took to the streets to Save Our School – the local secondary school, St. Tippings, from demolition as the ghastly fate of commuting to High Wycombe Grammar beckoned. It seemed a time to campaign for causes and for standing up to be counted, but more of that later.

I Love 1985 sees our Saturday evening nostalgia fest following its linear course, lending a sense of structure and cohesiveness to what would otherwise be unfocused stream of consciousness reminiscence, and it is indeed becoming possible to chart developing trends and stylistic preoccupations as the years have gone by. Whereas I Love 1984‘s piece on the rise and rise of Madonna Ciccione hinted at the growing emergence of “the marketing of the self”, initially I Love 1985 takes this to its logical extreme, seeming to be a roll call of emblems of ’80s chic and popularity, from Schwarzenegger to Springsteen. The section on the Artist Formerly Known As Prince ultimately did little to “unravel the puzzle” (as Mica Paris put it) of one of the most idiosyncratic figures in recent pop history, yet the segment on the evening’s hostess (a blend of archive footage and insights from the lady herself) established the maverick persona of Grace Jones with masterly economy. The combination of the air of sexual ambivalence and underlying menace and the exuberance of Grace’s vocals to some extent even overshadowed the songs themselves, though Slave to the Rhythm still sounds great. And as clips of her performances as a Zulu warrior woman in Conan the Destroyer and as murderous malcontent May Day in A View to a Kill (which despite a decrepit Roger Moore, was one of the better ’80s Bond films, but I digress) showed, it is better to remember Grace as an icon, not an actress.

The vision of Conan took us straight into the following section charting the humble beginnings of an iron-pumping Austrian and his ascendance to the status of cinematic icon. One can see now that despite the series’ reluctance to give such smash hits as Raiders of the Lost Ark andGhostbusters the nostalgia treatment, there is possibly some method present in this apparent madness. One of the most worthwhile aspects of I Love the Eighties has been its (unintentional?) documentation of the decline of the narrative-based Hollywood film (Greg Proops’ excellent dissection of Flashdance has been commented on elsewhere) where cohesive plotting and rounded characterisation was steadily displaced by a sequence of set pieces and an obsession with form over content. The action movie, as exemplified by the likes of Terminator and Commando, prioritised visceral thrills and capitalised on the photogenic potential of high-tech lethality, making Arnie the acceptable face of adolescent rabid kill-frenzy hardware and signalling the unfortunate descent of mainstream cinema into blockbuster infantilism. The popularity of Schwarzenegger (and Stallone) owed much to a period in cinema that embraced the hawkish, anti-Communist rhetoric of Reagan with a spate of aggressively nationalistic movies. A trend which reached its nadir with films such as Red Dawn, a queasy fusion of Cold War thriller and Brat Pack aesthetics as the Russian invasion of America is thwarted by a plucky band of teenage guerrillas and perhaps more controversially, Aliens, where the ruthless, single-minded predator of the original film is part of a race of gormless gooks to be systemically picked off by a bunch of wisecracking, reactionary bigots who contemplate nuking the entire planet from orbit: “It’s the only way to be sure.” Fortunately, features on Paul Hardcastle’s Nineteen and the Boss’ much-misinterpreted anthem Born in the USA were on hand to demonstrate that individuals were aware of this unsound ideology, and actively worked to critique this gung-ho mentality (“Spotty yoofs … oxycute ‘em!”)

Whilst I Love 1985 admirably evoked a time when the effects of globalisation were really starting, rightly or wrongly, to bite at British culture, it was gratifying to see the programme deviate from its mainly American-centric content and tackle some genuine British cultural artefacts. Like Miami Vice, Spitting Image was a programme I was not allowed to watch in its early years but I did so nonetheless. Viewed again nearly 16 years later, its propensity for political point-scoring now seems somewhat forcibly directed and more than a little naïve – if anything, the quietly savage depiction of the Windsor family as gambling, bone idle, common as muck ineffectual buffoons was rather more controversial and much funnier. Peter Kay made the excellent point that many viewers in fact cared little for the show’s politicised, polemical bite – a fact duly highlighted when the awesome Chicken Song, a satirical swipe at Black Lace, reached number one in the charts. It is intriguing to note that whereas the various examples of American film (Fame, First Blood) covered by I Love the Eighties have all adopted an overtly celebratory stance towards various aspects of its respective culture, the British film featured in I Love 1985 is, in stark contrast, a much more reactive, introspective work. My Beautiful Launderette is a wonderful movie, concise, cutting and compassionate in all the right places. Not content with taking the audience into the heart of London’s Asian community, the film takes in racism, the market economy and a gay love story. The launderette of the title becomes the symbol of the two lovers’ relationship and of their vulnerability when it is trashed by thugs, whilst the Asian businessmen of the film eagerly play Thatcher’s acquisitive, entrepreneurial game and are bewildered and angered by the prejudice still meted out towards them. East is East may be good for a few laughs, but it pales beside its brave and brilliant prototype.

So do you remember where you were on the 13 July 1985? I remember the thronging masses at Wembley Stadium – but I wasn’t there. It was late in 1984 that I first recall being struck by haunting images of emaciated Africans on my television screen as I glanced down guiltily at my toasted sandwich and the footage brings a lump to the throat even now. Months later, as the whole street tuned in for Live Aid, someone had the bright idea of organising a barbecue. An eminently impressive vignette, the section on Live Aid endearingly focused on the improvised feeling of the whole venture, the chaotic ineptitude of the broadcast links only adding to the exuberance of it all. When Katie Puckrik commented “When I was watching Live Aid, I felt like I was watching history in the making,” it was no hollow hyperbole. This was epic, epochal stuff – for the possibly the first time since 1981′s section on nuclear paranoia, I Love the Eighties had tackled something of genuine import and pulled it off with some considerable aplomb.

After a slightly wobbly variance in quality that has characterised the previous few programmes, the series may still be being edited just hours prior to transmission, yet I Love 1985 provides some reassurance that the producers are in charge of their material. In fact, the programme is easily the best instalment in the series since I Love 1981 (Adam Ant doesn’t possess half of Grace Jones’ dynamism and presence, so ’85 has the edge here – although not having Max Headroom as its presenter seemed a huge missed opportunity). As has been pointed out by other reviewers, the primary function of I Love the Eighties is to be evocative, not genuinely reflective or definitive.

And I Love 1985, more than any other edition in the series brought it all back to me – a fusion of fantasy and reality, where the flamboyant decadence of Prince contrasted with the horrors taking place in Ethiopia, where high concept pretensions mingled almost seamlessly with the down-to-earth basics of everyday life – MacDonalds, the megabucks corporation out to take over the world finally colonising our high street, men endeavouring to emulate Crockett and Tubbs’ tragic dress sense and pop stars uniting to save the world.

It was also the year that my father announced that we would have to relocate to Cheshire or he would be out of a job so I left behind my friends, my village and the lovely Louise – getting on the bus to High Wycombe wasn’t going to be a worry after all (but the SOS campaign failed and St. Tippings was demolished shortly after I moved away). In many ways, 1985 was the end of an era, the end of that authentic ’80s experience I recall with genuine fondness – the raised stakes, the heinous yuppie philosophy, the anodyne artificiality and close-minded false cheeriness of Neighbours and Stock, Aitken and Waterman was just around the corner. It wasn’t the end of my childhood of course, however 1986 would tell a completely different story. But perhaps that’s best left for someone else to tell…

Having studied aspects of Greek mythology in my formative years, been a regular viewer of the History Channel and a veteran player of Age of Empires, I feel somewhat well-disposed towardsThe Greeks. The first episode having centred around Athens establishing itself as the world’s first democracy, episode two deals with the continued rise of civilisation, Athens’ first decisive military success fending off the attentions of the oppressive Persian Empire, the building of the Parthenon and the origins of drama in the form of Greek tragedy. The daring plan of Themistocles ordering the construction of a navy and engineering the ambush of 200 Persian vessels in the straits of Salamis by Athenian triremes gave an intriguing insight into inspiring battle strategy without glamorising the concept of warmongering, whilst the strategist’s subsequent fall from grace in Athenian society, voted to be banished by the people due to fears of his rising political power revealed much about notions of pragmatic expediency lying behind the idealistic sheen of democracy.

A criticism that could be levelled at The Greeks is that it can be perceived as a dry exercise in academia, permitting no true entry point to the casual viewer. Is it the responsibility of programmes such as The Greeks to entertain or inform? There are many ways to make historical intrigue more accessible to an audience and the Athenian/Persian conflict and the banishment of Themistocles would make ideal subjects for dramatic presentation. Yet reconstruction of historical events in drama is an uncertain beast at best, oscillating between the heights attained by I, Claudius and the witless self-parody of The Borgias. A broad expanse of narrative is covered in The Greeks through an effective combination of convention such as the use of narration, filmed shots of models and artefacts, location filming of the actual ruins in Greece and commentary from various academic talking heads. A closed shop to some viewers, and something of an acquired taste, but an eminently successful format in its own right.

So where exactly does The Greeks lie in Jane Root’s vision for BBC2? I say the very existence of such a programme augurs well – I found The Greeks to be insightful, accessible and utterly absorbing. With I Love the Eighties to follow, I’m feeling an admiration for BBC2 that I’ve not had for some time, and I think I will enjoy the next few Saturday nights. After all, one can always spend time reading an edifying book and then settle down to enjoy a comic strip later in the evening?

You might care then to acquire one of the many self-improvement books on the market to tackle your inner psyche and unlock your hidden untapped potential to enhance and enrich your life, and of course to line the pockets of authors and publishers. Alternatively, you could take part in this six-part television documentary detailing the efforts of 12 people arriving at a country hotel to have their confidence boosted by a team of experts.

This very amiable documentary, narrated by Dawn French, deals with only two guinea pigs at a time. Nigel and Maria are the first to be put through their paces in a series of workshops organised by psychologist Ros Taylor, psychiatrist Dr Sandra Scott and communications expert Roy Leighton. Nigel, a chef offered a position supervising a golf club restaurant, seeks to overcome his difficulty with administration and paperwork and Maria, a Victim Support Manager with the job of raising awareness of her organisation’s work, shakes with fear at the prospect of public speaking. Almost inevitably, the roots of their difficulties lay in some childhood trauma – Nigel recalls his school essays being thrown back at him by an obnoxious teacher for incorrect spelling whilst Maria’s fears of self-humiliation speaking in front of an audience harked back to being made to recite her times tables by an unpleasant stepfather.

The strategies by which the experts got to work on their two subjects such as Maria being encouraged to chant her speeches before delivering them to help her relax made for some diverting and endearing viewing. It certainly helped no end that Nigel and Maria, ensconced back in their rooms reporting to their own video diaries, were both enormously likeable people and our sympathies were firmly paced with them as they worked to achieve their goals. Gratifyingly, the programme endeavoured to provide a sense of achievement and closure, as we see Nigel and Maria in their jobs in the aftermath of the course, putting in practice the skills they had acquired throughout their seven days in the country. Nigel, having undergone an almost complete metamorphosis and delivering an awesome motivational speech to his fellow participants, seemed almost frighteningly self-assured.

Ultimately, it seems that the course merely serves to reaffirm people’s perceptions of their own worth and ability. Maria and Nigel, both already successful at their jobs, came across as very competent people before their “treatment” had even begun. The very act of participating in a course designed to increase self-esteem indicates both were in fact fully intent on realising their objectives; they simply required an extra boost to send them on their way. One gets the impression that in their cases, all Nigel and Maria needed was a self-help manual and a bit of encouragement. No mention was made of the costs involved in the running of the course and whilst the programme did espouse the very genuine merits of therapy, Confidence Lab displays no real inclination to explore these issues in depth. Nevertheless, the spectacle of Nigel now an inspiring manager at his restaurant and Maria, addressing her audiences with verve and purpose and thoroughly enjoying herself, was wonderfully life-affirming. Emphasising the power of positive thinking and reminding us of the insecurities beneath a veneer of self-confidence that exist in us all, Confidence Lab was overall something of a triumph.

Big Brother: How Was It For You? takes its cue from the other major high profile show of the summer I Love the Seventies. This was a slight but enjoyable, well-intentioned effort combining archive footage and punditry from celebs such as Davina McCall, Graham Norton, Jon Snow, Times columnist Matthew Parris and Coronation Street actors Julie Hesmondhalgh and Tina O’Brien, as well as representatives of the Great British Public. Discussing the events in the house as they occurred in chronological order, the programme reasserted one of the most positive aspects of Big Brother. The fact that the series had brought people together, it was a case of television actually living up to its hype – unlike EastEnders, everybody was indeed talking about it. There was some welcome revisionism present in the interviewees’ perceptions of the housemates, now divorced from the editorialised slant of most of the updates and tabloid copy (“I liked Sada. I was sorry to see her go because she brought an element to it. I would rather have seen most of the men evicted before I voted Sada out.”) and some of the more unpopular contestants, Nick and Mel, now received praise for their contributions to the series. Overall, it was the clips of life in the house that elicited the most pleasure from this viewer – the exploits of Sada the mosquito-exterminating Buddhist, the fabulous, ill-tempered showdown between Craig and Caroline, the machinations and eventual comeuppance of Nick and Anna’s development from wallflower to comedienne in search of an audience.

The evening continued with What Happened to the Housemates? – our chance to catch up with the activities of the contestants as they discussed the impact that their participation in Big Brother has had on their lives. Yet there was very little actual analysis, no sense of the contestants offering much insight into their life-changing experiences as most (especially Nick and Craig) took their contribution to the programme as an opportunity to flaunt their new-found celebrity status. Unfortunately, the good-natured, nostalgic feel of the previous programme was all but dissipated here by the all-pervasive melancholia of this documentary. Sada managed to dampen the atmosphere very early on by bemoaning the press intrusion into her everyday life since leaving the house while Melanie complained (albeit with some justification) about the media’s tendency to reduce genuine three-dimensional people into accessible, inappropriate stereotypes.

Watching the ex-housemates on our television screens, turning up on The Priory, TFI Friday and Celebrity Ready Steady Cook has been an awkward, bewildering sight. Now out of the artificial environment of the Big Brother house, they are no longer our guinea pigs; there appears to be have been a fundamental change in these “ordinary people” as they now exploit their status for the purposes of self-promotion and self-gratification (rubbing shoulders with Brad Pitt, Boyzone and Ainsley Harriot) that feels unpalatable somehow. However, for those wishing to follow the current activities of the 11, the programme delivered on its promises. Nick, having released his tie-in book and video and filmed his own game show, Trust Me, was reluctant to unveil his next bid for world domination but remained quietly confident of future deals to come. Craig has clinched an album deal and now intends to close down his building business to concentrate on a recording career. We saw clips of Melanie filming her own game show Chained, Tom starting out as a club DJ, Claire appearing in Jack and the Beanstalk at Windsor and Caroline taking a break from recording her album to switch on the Christmas lights at Wolverhampton. There is a definite sense of the contestants merely swapping one rarefied cocoon for another as they move from hotel to hotel, traveling by limousine accompanied by bodyguards and publicists. It no longer seemed to matter how they had behaved during their time in the house, their personalities now lost within the Big Brother publicity machine. The series may have provided compulsive viewing, but it also appears to have precipitated some of the most inexplicable, unworthy career resurrections since Joan Collins shagged Oliver Tobias in a lift in The Stud.

Given the revenue that Channel 4 and Bazal Productions have attained from the success of the show, one can hardly blame any of the contestants for their subsequent opportunism and yet there was little evidence of celebrity being utilised in a positive manner. Gratifyingly, Darren appeared intent on traveling to promote AIDS awareness in Jamaica, Andrew planning to travel and work abroad, while Anna seemed unaltered by her fame, remaining just as engaging – and enigmatic – as ever, even though she too appeared to have reservations about her participation in the show (“It was a good experience. It was a funny experience. It was something that I’d never do again and I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody.”) Ironically, it was Nichola, previously one of the most emotionally inconsistent of the participants, now living in London and concentrating on her clothing designs, who seemed the most well adjusted of all. Refreshingly unfazed by the limited success of her single The Game and utterly philosophical and candid about her experience of Big Brother (“I think all this celebrity stuff is just a load of bollocks”), she emerged as a reassuringly upbeat and very likeable figure.

Ultimately, this was a somewhat sobering reading of the aftermath of Big Brother (so much so that I did not feel inclined to watch the highlights of the final week in the house or the viewers’ favourite episode scheduled after a Graham Norton special) – but a programme that should be essential viewing for anyone applying to take part in the second series. How Was It For You? and What Happened to the Housemates? were both nevertheless appropriate tributes to disparate aspects of Big Brother, and eminently watchable footnotes to the most caustically compelling television of the year.