The mods and admin here are all pretty used to being criticised for being critical of Big Brother Australia – and it’s something I at least have seen across the forums and in chat over the first week. I can only speak for myself but I agree with the view that’s it been a pretty decent first week of the show – but the problem is there are no signs that they can sustain it beyond that.
Both BB05 and BB06 got off to a pretty promising start – but within a few weeks began to fall apart – and I’ve seen no reason to believe BB07 will be any different – and actually, in the last couple of days we’ve learnt BB just hasn’t learned from their mistakes.
We begin with relationship twist #3. Although I agree with the view this is the best of the relationship twists, I can’t help but feel the show didn’t need it. Although they could still do better, the line up of housemates alone should be enough to sustain interest during the first week, but obviously producers feel we need to throw in the Hayley and Andrew storyline to keep things flowing – which ultimately causes two problems:
Firstly, week one isn’t Big Brother – it’s the Hayley and Andrew show and virtually every storyline is centered around them. Secondly, if it’s the focus of the show in week one, once the relationship is revealed, the show loses it’s focus – and we just end up with another couple in the house. Think JamKat, but with one year of practice!
The second main twist was voting in two housemates – a simple, but effective twist – though it would have been more effective if the launch had been live so the chosen HMs could have entered at the end of the evening.
However, what was the point in voting in Susannah and Zoran when they are little more than extras in the daily show. Really, we saw more of them in their opening VTs than we have in the last week.
The third twist is the good one – the White Room. It’s easily the best of the three twists – but apart from split-second glimpses, hasn’t even featured in the daily show.
Now, we bought it up when it was revealed that the twist had already been part of the Norway-Sweden version of Big Brother – but that in itself isn’t an issue as long as no one is claiming it’s a “World First”. However, it is an interesting comparison and with the challenge being “last man standing”, it was worthy to note that in the Scandinavian equivalent there were still three remaining after 30 days, resulting in Big Brother having to set a competition to determine the winner.
This is where we hold the producers to account – not only Gretel claiming BB had no idea that the housemates would last so long after just six days, but more importantly Big Brother giving up on probably their best twist of the series after just a week.
That is why I have a problem with Big Brother Australia “borrowing” ideas from other versions around the world – like the revenge room and the twins twist before it, they never follow through the idea to it’s full potential and instead rush them through to an unsatisfactory conclusion, rather than fully embracing them and adding their own twists to the twists to make something truly original.
Enough of the negative, time to say something positive – I love the twists to nominations this year.
At last there seems to be a real reward to winning FNL – allowing the winner and their chosen partner to discuss nominations gives them a tactical edge, though as it’s only two housemates, it’s unlikely it’ll ever seriously affect the nominations result.
I especially love though that they’ve finally dropped the three point twist in favour of something more substantial. Allowing the FNL winner to both save a nominee and name the relationship will not only cause friction amongst enemies when a new nominee is chosen, but ultimately will create friction amongst friends if one of them is chosen over another to be saved from facing eviction.
Finally, the BBUK rumour mill is beginning to swing into action at the moment, though we’re still at the stage where you can pretty much consider all rumours to be untrue – the only thing confirmed is that Russell Brand has left Big Mouth after three years, while psychological show Big Brain has been axed after just a year.
C4 are expected to release some information about BB8 within the next week or so, with at least the new logo and the start date, believed to be around 24th May, set to be confirmed. To keep up to date, check out the International Forum.