BBC3 has found another way to ruin the festival experience, with a twist so cruel that Big Brother would steer clear
^For a channel that counts Fearne Cotton and Greg James as regular hosts of its festival coverage, BBC3 has found a way of further spoiling the experience of listening to live music in a field. *Festivals, Sex and Suspicious Parents* follows in the vomit-flecked footsteps of its reality-ish predecessors, Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents, and Snow, Sex and Suspicious Parents.
What these shows do is ruin young people's holidays. The producers pretend they are filming a group of friends on their first trip away from their families, let them go wild with giddy independence, then offer up a twist so cruel that Big Brother would steer clear, by revealing that their parents have been watching them all along. Their parents have been viewing footage of those nights out on neon streets. They have seen them getting sunburned and drunk and snogging strangers. They have tutted as they passed out in the street, and flinched as they threw up in bins. The parents seem shaken and confused. Their children are, rightly, horrified.
This latest incarnation brings the hedonism back to the UK and sends its poor targets – and they are targets – off to a music festival. Now, I know that the best way to approach a festival isn't a drinking game involving rum, whisky, beer and cider on the drive there, but our first perp, Chris from Hull, is 20, so he is yet to learn this. On arrival, he flops out of the car on to the grass, poleaxed by his own enthusiasm.
Our other guide for the weekend is 19-year-old Lauren from Plymouth, who attacks the first day with similar gusto. She's known as a boozer, and under the glare of the cameras, seems keen to live up to her reputation. Her best friend Holly takes care of her sweetly, but is weary from always being the least drunk person in the relationship, and eventually, when their night looks as if it will be cut short, she loses her patience. They have a brilliant argument that involves them both repeatedly saying, "IT'S FINE BABE"/"NO, IT'S FINE BABE" its volume escalating with the level of not-fine that it is.
They both make a bit of a spectacle of themselves, obviously. Lauren takes to weeing in public to avoid the queues, and slurs abuse at a red-haired passerby: "Gingers don't allowed to be on camera." More worryingly, Chris grinds up against girls in the dance tent, then calls them "slags" when they walk away. "I didn't get much attention off girls tonight"– the words slosh out of his mouth – "apart from some slags." (Later, his mother decides this is his way of putting off girls because he's not ready for them, which is a remarkable mental contortion whichever way you look at it.)
And yet, if it's supposed to be an indictment of modern youth, it's a tepid one. Lauren and Chris wake up the next morning and realise they've been a bit daft, and take it easy, or easier, for the rest of the weekend. What's really disconcerting here is the show itself, not the behaviour of its young participants. By interspersing the footage of teenagers partying – no different than what you could see in any town or city on any given weekend in the UK – with clips of appalled parents watching it, it both encourages this behaviour and wags a finger at it. It's sneaky and disingenuous.
Throughout, I felt the teenagers had been done over, particularly Lauren. Presumably they all signed waivers, but was there any need to linger on her having a wee for quite so long, and quite so many times? And more importantly, why would any parents put themselves up for this show in the first place? It's a grotesque mature version of a baby monitor that can only confirm the one inevitable outcome – that away from authority figures, young people will act differently. Though after this scarring experience, it's unlikely that Lauren or Chris will ever let loose again, for fear that somewhere, somehow, their mum is hiding, watching them chat someone up. Perhaps that's the point, after all.
Telly fans on the hunt for the next Breaking Bad have put a lot of pressure on Sky Atlantic's moody True Detective, but it might be worth looking a little closer to home, as the excellent crooked cop drama *Line of Duty *(BBC2) continues to pick up pace. The third episode of six saw Keeley Hawes – a shoo-in for every TV award going for this role, surely – imprisoned, with her DI Denton fitted up for murder in a conspiracy bigger than she could have imagined. At least, I think that's what is happening. One of the most enjoyable things about Jed Mercurio's creation is that it wrongfoots you at every turn, and each twist is a real surprise. Much like your parents turning up to tell you off at your first festival, actually, only without the added humiliation. Reported by guardian.co.uk 9 hours ago.
^For a channel that counts Fearne Cotton and Greg James as regular hosts of its festival coverage, BBC3 has found a way of further spoiling the experience of listening to live music in a field. *Festivals, Sex and Suspicious Parents* follows in the vomit-flecked footsteps of its reality-ish predecessors, Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents, and Snow, Sex and Suspicious Parents.
What these shows do is ruin young people's holidays. The producers pretend they are filming a group of friends on their first trip away from their families, let them go wild with giddy independence, then offer up a twist so cruel that Big Brother would steer clear, by revealing that their parents have been watching them all along. Their parents have been viewing footage of those nights out on neon streets. They have seen them getting sunburned and drunk and snogging strangers. They have tutted as they passed out in the street, and flinched as they threw up in bins. The parents seem shaken and confused. Their children are, rightly, horrified.
This latest incarnation brings the hedonism back to the UK and sends its poor targets – and they are targets – off to a music festival. Now, I know that the best way to approach a festival isn't a drinking game involving rum, whisky, beer and cider on the drive there, but our first perp, Chris from Hull, is 20, so he is yet to learn this. On arrival, he flops out of the car on to the grass, poleaxed by his own enthusiasm.
Our other guide for the weekend is 19-year-old Lauren from Plymouth, who attacks the first day with similar gusto. She's known as a boozer, and under the glare of the cameras, seems keen to live up to her reputation. Her best friend Holly takes care of her sweetly, but is weary from always being the least drunk person in the relationship, and eventually, when their night looks as if it will be cut short, she loses her patience. They have a brilliant argument that involves them both repeatedly saying, "IT'S FINE BABE"/"NO, IT'S FINE BABE" its volume escalating with the level of not-fine that it is.
They both make a bit of a spectacle of themselves, obviously. Lauren takes to weeing in public to avoid the queues, and slurs abuse at a red-haired passerby: "Gingers don't allowed to be on camera." More worryingly, Chris grinds up against girls in the dance tent, then calls them "slags" when they walk away. "I didn't get much attention off girls tonight"– the words slosh out of his mouth – "apart from some slags." (Later, his mother decides this is his way of putting off girls because he's not ready for them, which is a remarkable mental contortion whichever way you look at it.)
And yet, if it's supposed to be an indictment of modern youth, it's a tepid one. Lauren and Chris wake up the next morning and realise they've been a bit daft, and take it easy, or easier, for the rest of the weekend. What's really disconcerting here is the show itself, not the behaviour of its young participants. By interspersing the footage of teenagers partying – no different than what you could see in any town or city on any given weekend in the UK – with clips of appalled parents watching it, it both encourages this behaviour and wags a finger at it. It's sneaky and disingenuous.
Throughout, I felt the teenagers had been done over, particularly Lauren. Presumably they all signed waivers, but was there any need to linger on her having a wee for quite so long, and quite so many times? And more importantly, why would any parents put themselves up for this show in the first place? It's a grotesque mature version of a baby monitor that can only confirm the one inevitable outcome – that away from authority figures, young people will act differently. Though after this scarring experience, it's unlikely that Lauren or Chris will ever let loose again, for fear that somewhere, somehow, their mum is hiding, watching them chat someone up. Perhaps that's the point, after all.
Telly fans on the hunt for the next Breaking Bad have put a lot of pressure on Sky Atlantic's moody True Detective, but it might be worth looking a little closer to home, as the excellent crooked cop drama *Line of Duty *(BBC2) continues to pick up pace. The third episode of six saw Keeley Hawes – a shoo-in for every TV award going for this role, surely – imprisoned, with her DI Denton fitted up for murder in a conspiracy bigger than she could have imagined. At least, I think that's what is happening. One of the most enjoyable things about Jed Mercurio's creation is that it wrongfoots you at every turn, and each twist is a real surprise. Much like your parents turning up to tell you off at your first festival, actually, only without the added humiliation. Reported by guardian.co.uk 9 hours ago.