Wednesday 5 December 2007

Now Game Shows Really ARE Torture to Watch!

Today's Emirates Today (oddly thin, recently, at 32 pages. If they cut a section, it really would be 24x7) comes with the delicious news that a new home-grown reality TV show is to be launched. The page 3 piece, which doesn't name the production company that is creating the show and that has 'already talked to three of the leading broadcast channels in the region', outlines the novel concept they've come up with.

And, I have to agree, it's a classic. It had me in stitches of helpless laughter.

The show will 'pit individuals against each other in a competition that conveys the social nature of human beings' according to Emirates Today's story. This translates into a most novel concept indeed. In fact the six finalists will be locked in a room with nothing but basic amenities and the winner will be the one that outlasts the rest.

Of course, attempts at 'Big Brother' type shows in the Middle East have failed in the past because of negative public perception and, at times, reaction to the concept of having people sleeping together communally. So now we get over that hurdle by locking them in solitary!!!

The winner can expect to gain the added prize money from each contestant that drops out and also get a car at the end. The prize money could be as much as Dhs 100,000, gushes the show's co-creator, Anjum Fatima, in the ET story.

So each contestant will be paid Dhs 1,000 per day for going insane in a situation only normally imposed as a form of punishment or torture. Brilliant. Solitary confinement as a game show. Only someone quite mad could have thought this up - let alone how mad you'd have to be to allow them to execute the scheme. Nothing like as mad as the contestants are going to be by the end of it, though...

Whatever next? Chinese Water torture? 24 hour electro-shock therapy beamed direct to your home?

Torture TV. It's the way ahead!

1 comment:

Brn said...

As far as torturing the contestants, they still have a long way to go to catch the Japanese. I have no idea why, but they love sadistic game shows.

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