Reality show is so cruel

Feb 27 2011 by Ian Robson, Sunday Sun

WOULD you be prepared to let potential new neighbours choose if you can move in?

How much would you suck up to them to influence their decision?

That is the dodgy premise behind a cruel new reality series launching on Channel Four this week.

It’s called Love Thy Neighbour. No, nothing to do with THAT Love Thy Neighbour, but a completely different animal.

Twelve families compete for a chance to move into the village of Grassington, North Yorkshire, with the winner chosen by the residents.

I can’t imagine why anyone would subject themselves to what is essentially a popularity contest.

Or why anyone who want to live with people ready and willing to pass judgement on them in the public arena of a television series.

It’s nothing more than messing with people’s minds, dressed up as one of those social experiments television executives are so keen on these days.

But this is the station that brought us Big Brother so we can’t expect anything better.

And I suppose the opportunity to win a £300,000 cottage does send self-respect flying out of the window.

The choice of contestants is, of course, loaded and designed for conflict.

Publicity for the show states: “Are the residents prepared to embrace change as families from all walks of life, with diverse racial backgrounds and sexualities, battle it out to win their hearts, and often change their minds, in a bid to win their dream life in the country?”

That presupposes that Grassington is a hot-bed of discrimination which, as far as I know, it isn’t.

In the first episode a young black family compete against a Yorkshire family.

One of them goes door-to-door pressing the flesh in a desperate attempt to win friends and influence people.

The head of the other donates his skills as a handyman in his search for votes to let his family stay.

Both arrange social events in a bid to manipulate the feelings of villagers towards them.

And it seems the locals are won over by a rendition of Frank Sinatra’s My Way.

What a sorry state of affairs when families are reduced to such circus behaviour in the scramble for a house.

Mr Popularity will also win against someone who may well be a good neighbour but is a bit reserved and does not know the words to My Way.

As the saying goes, everyone needs good neighbours, but I wonder what the programme is doing for good relations when it starts from the assumption that Grassington is racist and homophobic and encourages participating families to perform parlour tricks to get on their good side.