Television used to employ entertainers to entertain the public. Back then you could count the channels on the fingers of one hand and still have a thumb left over to stick aloft in praise of the nightly parade of talent. That was decades ago, before every housing estate in the land pointed supplicatory dishes at the cosmos, which beamed back numberless multi-channels devoted to cooking and/or shopping, golfing and/or shagging. It’s all changed. Now television employs the public to entertain the public. It’s cheaper.
So we have talent shows, reality shows, aspirational have-a-go shows from which contestants are expelled one at a time. It is always gripping to find out which members of the public can sing/sell/bake exceedingly good cakes. But as a non-optional extra audiences are also offered the back story, an endless river of soap, snot and sobs in which participants attest that they’re doing this for an auntie with Bell’s palsy, or in memory of a much-admired guinea pig that just pegged it.
This is why Hunted (Channel 4, Thursdays) has blown in like a fresh breeze.
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