What's all this shouting? We'll have no trouble here. Ah but we will. Just when you thought that reality TV couldn't get any weirder than Celebrity Big Brother, or more dubious than Temptation Island, along comes Boot Camp (Sky One). And it is very shouty indeed.
Imported from America, but actually made by Granada, Boot Camp follows 16 recruits being put through their paces in pursuit of a $500,000 prize. Each week the recruits undertake a number of rigorous activities - this week's included rowing and carrying a dinghy for a long time, getting up at 5am and eating scrambled eggs and an unidentified white gloop for breakfast - after which they vote out one of their number on the rather picturesque Dismissal Hill. The reject is then allowed their revenge by taking another recruit with them. When only two recruits are left, they must compete for 48 hours continuously in what is being called "The Gauntlet". One imagines there is running to be done.
They do all this while being shouted at by the deafening drill instructors, who say things like, "Save the drama for your mama and give me 50 [press-ups]", and "The purpose of our processing is to break them down emotionally and physically." A normal conversation between an instructor and a recruit goes something like this:
Instructor: "What's the theme of Campbell's Soup Company?"
Recruit: "'Mm! Mm! Good!' sir!"
Instructor, looking like he is excreting a handgrenade: "LOUDER!"
Recruit: "'MM! MM! GOOD!' SIR!"
(I have no idea why they are talking about soup but you get the picture.)
Another instructor climbs on a table to shout at one recruit in whose suitcase she finds a teddy. "WHAT IS THIS??", she hollers inches from his face. Spittle must certainly be an issue.
Soon, the male recruits have their heads shaved, the women their hair cut, and they are giving in to authority at every available opportunity. Not long after that, they are referring to themselves in the third person like good psychopaths. Needless to say, it is all quite hilarious.
Boot Camp marks the newest evolution in its genre. It takes the quintessential elements of reality TV - ignominy and discomfort - and turns up the volume. The contestants are made to suffer simply for applying, and one poor woman wimps out after mere hours in the camp. But it is also packaged much more like a drama, with glossy titles, nippy editing and soaring scenery shots from helicopters.
Where Boot Camp falls down is the contestants. None of them are remotely endearing. Naturally, they are all losers and idiots (who else applies to go on these shows?) but there isn't one of them who you'd like to see win. Not he-of-the-teddy, who says, "I'm Dave Thomson, winner", thus making himself sound like a complete dud; not Meyer, the Nasty Nick of the group; not Haar, a pig farmer from Georgia; not Yaney, a professional balloon sculptor; and certainly not Whitlow, who proclaims, "I don't want to win everything, because then I'm a target. I want to do the little things that I can to be part of the team. When the time comes, you'll see me." We want her strung up like in A Man Called Horse.
Too aware of the camera as an active participant in the show, the contestants are all acting (one is actually an actress), and while it's distracting to see Mean Meyer confess to faking his tears to incite sympathy, it soon wears thin. Now that we - and those who apply for it - know the trick of reality TV, the casting that takes place, the editing that's done, it's not so much fun. The naivety and the novelty is gone, so that reality TV is now just as unreal as anything else on the box. Fingers crossed, then, that next week, they have to swim the alligator-infested lake.
It was most apt that Sian Evans had echoes of Martine McCutcheon about her. As the subject of the wonderfully watchable Faking It (Channel 4), she was to be - in a My Fair Lady stylee - transformed from classical cellist to club DJ in a month. From venturing out to a club in a polo-neck jumper to larging it on the decks with some wicked choons, Sian's transformation was a real joy to watch (and an education if you want to pretend to be someone else). At the end of her month, she had to fool some top DJs that she wasn't a novice. And by Jove, she did it. A big up to her.
