worst. series. ever.

Long-time readers will know that I have been a committed defender of Big Brother. Since the glory days of Jess and Marty, Chrissie and Daniel, I have persevered through mediocre years and still found some enjoyment in watching the personalities and interactions of "ordinary" people living in the goldfish-bowl of my television.

Not this year.

I suppose I can't comment on the series overall, since my interest rapidly dwindled from day one, and I turned it off once and for all about six weeks into the series. However, based on the small amount I did see, I've got to say it was without question some of the worst television I have ever witnessed.

The regular technical fuck-ups have still not been ironed out (for God's sake, you've been producing the show for seven years now, surely you've figured out how to produce a live telecast without embarrassing yourselves?). Gretel Killeen is clearly completely over it, and seesaws disturbingly between bitchy apathy and near-manic hysteria (although it was a treat seeing her get belted in the head by a rubber chicken during the finale). They've run out of any interesting concepts for weekly tasks and/or Friday Night Games, and constantly re-hash the same old ideas.

But the most fundamental problem (as with the last few years, but it's getting progressively worse) is the choice of housemates. We're over the Aussie ocker bloke. We're over the dumb FHM models with fake tits. We're over absurdly camp gay boys. We're over improbably buff action-men/male models. Can we please please see some real people? Otherwise, what's the point? I don't know any people who resemble this year's Big Brother contestants, and frankly I don't wish to. Thus, unlike the first three seasons, the show no longer has anything to say about my life or my world.

Surely it can't be that difficult to assemble a genuinely diverse bunch of people? BBUK seems to manage. Are we just too small a country? Or is the problem a vicious cycle: Every year the housemates get duller and more stereotyped, so every year, less of the intelligent / charismatic / interesting / unsual people in the country bother to apply... and so the housemates end up even duller and even more stereotyped.

It also hasn't escaped my notice that the show's distasteful decline began at the exact moment Executive Producer - and original voice of Big Brother - Peter Abbott retired from the show. That man used to pour his heart and soul into this program, and it's quite telling that the whole affair has become progressively shallower and stupider since the day he handed the reigns over to others.

I could go on and on about my disappointment that a concept with so much potential is being so utterly wasted. But essentially it boils down to the fact that there needs to be a balance between making money off teenagers, and creating compelling television. It is possible to do both, but the current Big Brother producers are apparently incapable of it. For a few years there, the show had something of interest to offer me as a viewer. Now it's simply insulting to my intelligence.