Heartland

the most ambitious tv hoax ever? or yet more exploitative "reality" tv rubbish? you decide...

clicky for anyone who has no idea what i'm wibbling on about.

RicheyJames wrote:the most ambitious tv hoax ever? or yet more exploitative "reality" tv rubbish? you decide...

clicky for anyone who has no idea what i'm wibbling on about.

It's been done, America did it in the sixties.......you know.....the whole "men on the moon" pish!

I'm looking forward to it if they can pull it off

Brideoffrankenstein wrote:I'm looking forward to it if they can pull it off

Didn't know it was reality porn, Libby. Cheers for the heads up, I might actually watch the telly for once.

RicheyJames wrote:the most ambitious tv hoax ever? or yet more exploitative "reality" tv rubbish? you decide...

clicky for anyone who has no idea what i'm wibbling on about.

part of me dismisses it as "yet more exploitative "reality" tv rubbish"

and then I start to snigger at the sad desperation of the contestants all using the series as the starting point for a career as a banal and insipid TV presenter or teen idol.



What would be perfect is to put the contestants through absolute hell for weeks before finally revealing ... that none of it will be televised.

I think it's bloody calculating on the part of the TV execs.

"What do people want to watch?"
"I'll tell you what they don't want, more reality TV".
"Hmmm yes, that's becoming a rather tired format, isn't it..."
"They've seen the contestants for the attention-seeking little Z-listers that they are, and they're sick of them."
"Well that's why we try and make Big Brother more evil every year."
"Yes... but think outside the box, guys - if we want to wring any more out of "Reality TV" we're going to have to do some serious brainstorming...

*coffee is consumed, executive toys fiddled with, bits of paper scribbled on. Then a bloke with braces pipes up...*

"If we want this format to survive, we really have to push the envelope. Turn the tables on the contestants completely. We have to make a show where the public can laugh a knowing laugh at these people."
"How do you propose we do this?"
"I don't know, but Johnny Vaughan's gotta host it."

*Mutters of "genius" around the table.

Fucks sake. I just made up a non-existent conversation .
But I bet it happened .

I think big brother in space is a great idea. (while I suppose the makers to be too dim to know there will be a re-entry)
It underlines the TV`s tendency to turn into Punch and Judy-play for adults.
Give them ten more years- then there wil be 25 pictures a second, none of which is worth being seen. That happens when you have more media than contents. (I suspect german TV to rot within the next 10 years, I guess the UK is ahead of us!?)

Serves them all right. As soon as those contestants got a whiff of Johnny Vaughn's involvement, they should have legged it sharpish.

Now if it had been Johnny Vegas presenting it, that might have been interesting.

haven't we moved on from the days when this cretin ruled the earth?


A big hand for....... Jeremy!

eotunun wrote:I think big brother in space is a great idea. (while I suppose the makers to be too dim to know there will be a re-entry)
It underlines the TV`s tendency to turn into Punch and Judy-play for adults.
Give them ten more years- then there wil be 25 pictures a second, none of which is worth being seen. That happens when you have more media than contents. (I suspect german TV to rot within the next 10 years, I guess the UK is ahead of us!?)

Next stop, blipverts

The thing is, when they land in "Russia" will they twig that the temperature outside is about 20 degrees warmer than it should be?

come on - Russia in december?

Brideoffrankenstein wrote:come on - Russia in december?

space, sorry near space all year round
all the time, now I think about it

Brideoffrankenstein wrote:The thing is, when they land in "Russia" will they twig that the temperature outside is about 20 degrees warmer than it should be?

come on - Russia in december?

I heard something about, they're all saying how much colder it is and so on...

Also I think they're meant to be in Kazakhstan... which I wouldn't imagine is toasty at this time of year, but like they're going to know what the climate's supposed to be like in a country they've never heard of!

I like the introduction which stressed the gullibility of the subjects.

It makes me feel better laughing at them in the coming weeks, and while waiting for the 'reveal' that they've been had!

I watched the first episode and decided it was exploitative reality trash… I’m still going to watch it though.

i missed the first episode as i rarely watch tv these days and only just read about it.
the concept's conceivably amusing apart from this:
how do they get past the obvious problem of the contestants wondering why the shuttle/rocket they are going in isn't actually a shuttle/rocket?
should they actually go to the expense of using an actual rocket/shuttle for this part of the show how are they going to convince the people on board that they have taken off? at some point they are going to have to transfer them from a real environment to a fake one.
if the contestants really are so stupid -sorry, i mean gullible- then it's probably going to be fairly dull: getting one over on a retard is about as rewarding as fishing.

as i understand it, the "cadets" will be led to the "shuttle" via some sort of sealed passageway and not have the chance to see that it's basically a big wooden box on hydraulics. i'd imagine there will also be plenty of dry ice and bright lights to further disorientate them.

having watched the first show i'm actually fascinated by the pyschological side of it: the power of belief reinforced by peer pressure and an unwillingness to be the odd one out. the "rubber eyeballs" test during the selection process was particularly illuminating in this sense.

I only saw about the last 10 minutes of this, between Rome and Lost.

One immediate point leapt to my mind as they stood at Biggin Hill, clutching their passports, and were told they were flying to Russia.

Not one of these 'adventure seekers' has been to a country where you need a visa to get in. If they had, they would notice that no such visas had been arranged because they hadn't had the bit of paper pasted into their passports or indeed given them up for the application process.

There's another valid point in that the Russian space programme mostly operates from Baikonur (sp?) which is actually in Kazakhstan. That's another pile of red tape to get through, then since a Russian visa (even an imaginary one) won't allow you into Kazakhstan. If it did I would have swung through Petropavlovsk in the summer, taking a different route out of Yekaterinburg.

andymackem wrote:There's another valid point in that the Russian space programme mostly operates from Baikonur (sp?) which is actually in Kazakhstan. That's another pile of red tape to get through, then since a Russian visa (even an imaginary one) won't allow you into Kazakhstan. If it did I would have swung through Petropavlovsk in the summer, taking a different route out of Yekaterinburg.

Can't recieve that show here, but just a little remark:
Isn't the training programme mostly situated near Moskow in the City of Stars or Star City or something like that Saw a documentary about it some time ago when a Dutch astronaut was being sent in space, and seem to remeber that...

Perhaps so, but the main launch site is in Kazakhstan. Always has been, though no-one noticed back in the old Soviet days when it was all the same country.

Star City (presumably not the trading estate near Birmingham) may be elsewhere. Off the top of my head I don't recall.

andymackem wrote:I only saw about the last 10 minutes of this, between Rome and Lost.

One immediate point leapt to my mind as they stood at Biggin Hill, clutching their passports, and were told they were flying to Russia.

Not one of these 'adventure seekers' has been to a country where you need a visa to get in. If they had, they would notice that no such visas had been arranged because they hadn't had the bit of paper pasted into their passports or indeed given them up for the application process.

There's another valid point in that the Russian space programme mostly operates from Baikonur (sp?) which is actually in Kazakhstan. That's another pile of red tape to get through, then since a Russian visa (even an imaginary one) won't allow you into Kazakhstan. If it did I would have swung through Petropavlovsk in the summer, taking a different route out of Yekaterinburg.

Do you know for a fact that things like that hasn't actually been sorted out? I'm sure that sort of stuff doesn't make good telly!!

I know for a fact that they won't have a Russian visa because they're not going to Russia.

What surprises me is that nobody among the dupes thought to query this. It would have seemed obvious to me.

and what's to stop the production team mocking up visas for everyone? unless you'd seen one before how would you know it was fake?

andymackem wrote:I know for a fact that they won't have a Russian visa because they're not going to Russia.

What surprises me is that nobody among the dupes thought to query this. It would have seemed obvious to me.

Do you know that they haven't issued them fake visas, or fed them a line explaining why they don't need/have them?

Judging on how excited the cadets were last night when they were told of their fate, they will believe anything they are told right now because they want to believe it. Don't forget, they have already proved in tests they they are easily suggestible.

RicheyJames wrote:and what's to stop the production team mocking up visas for everyone? unless you'd seen one before how would you know it was fake?

LOL. OI. Bugger off. I was trying to argue for a change