A collection of writing

This article was originally featured on StudentPunch.com, which is a student online magazine that I write TV articles for. I will be archiving all of my articles that that were featured on Student Punch— Andrew.

Big Brother, and its celebrity counterpart, for that matter, has declined in quality with every passing year, and there can be no doubt about that. It used to be a massive phenomenon in the UK, but now it’s a programme that everybody loves to hate, and for good reason too. However, something strange has happened to me recently: I have been enjoying the last season of Celebrity Big Brother.

Let us get this straight right now: Celebrity Big Brother is still not a good show. In fact, the Big Brother franchise represents everything that is wrong with TV today, with this recent series of Celebrity Big Brother being no different. However, there is something about this recent series that I have enjoyed, despite my natural desire to hate it as much as possible.

The show’s list of celebrities ranged from the famous (Vinnie Jones) to the “Who the hell is that?” (Ronnie Wood’s ex-girlfriend). While the show’s list of celebrities was nothing exceptional, it seemed to be a good mixture. Obviously, the producers tried to create arguments and tension at all times, even before the celebrities entered the house, but these arguments never happened and I’m always glad to see the producers fail to get the reaction they wanted. The housemates seemed to get up to a good mixture of mischief and harmless fun, without just shouting at each other in order to create entertainment, which I find to be extremely tedious and boring.

The producers of the show did have a couple of tricks up their sleeve, though. The house featured a tree outside in the garden that would occasionally talk to the housemates if they were outside and alone. The tree would give tasks to the housemates and they always consisted of something funny for that housemate to try and do to the other housemates. The voice of the tree itself was funny and it would take the piss out of the housemates where appropriate, but all of these tree tasks were harmless and just a bit of fun, which the show might have been lacking if the housemates were left to their own devices. It’s also a breath of fresh air as usually the producers just want everybody to either fight with each other or get into a relationship, and while that nearly happened, it certainly was not as pronounced as years gone by.

Another new feature of the series was montages. Everybody loves a good montage, and the show did well to feature montages to break up the monotony of certain tasks or parties. In previous years, if the housemates had a task, we would just see them moment for moment, and it ran the risk of being extremely boring because we don’t need to watch ten people do the same exact same thing, over and over. The montages broke it up and just gave us highlights of some of these events, which sometimes made them funnier. They were a bit off-putting at first, but I eventually came round to them.

The show just seemed to be a bit more fun than it had been for many years. I think Celebrity Big Brother is generally more enjoyable than the normal Big Brother anyway, but I do think this series has improved over the last few years…and that’s something that I really did not think I would be saying about a show that is, like I stated earlier, really not a good show. However, I am still endlessly happy that this franchise is ending and I really hope that the death of this show creates a shift in the television world that moves away from the celebrity focused reality TV shows on our screens now, and towards good original programmes.

So, there, I enjoyed it. Maybe it’s because I knew it was the last celebrity series ever and that the full franchise will be dying later this year. Maybe it’s because I am a maniac. I do not know. I am quite willing to side with the latter option, though.

AC.

The original article can be found at http://studentpunch.com/celebrity-big-brother.html