Film & TV 1,753

Gogglebox: The ultimate in trifling ‘documentary’

By · On November 22, 2013
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Channel 4 has presented us with an unrealistic documentary series in which we watch people watching television. One writer’s not having any of it.

gogglebox

Gogglebox is like a cross between Noel’s House Party and the Nuremberg trials, but with more colourful socks. And even more extraordinary, the whole thing seems to be narrated by a bad mimic attempting to do an Alan Bennett impression. So thick and wobbly is the accent, that I half expected to see the boy from the Hovis advert crash his bike through one of the living room windows. In fact, if a Hovis loaf ever learned to talk, then it would sound like the voice-over man.

What happens when you start watching people watch Gogglebox? Infinite regression until the universe implodes?

Whoever thought Gogglebox would be a legitimate idea for a television programme? If you aren’t already aware, Gogglebox is a Channel 4 documentary in which audiences watch TV viewers watching television. There’s scraping the barrel and then there’s fishing out the mould that rots the barrel from the inside. TV executives really must be running low on ideas when a programme mainly about sitting gets the green light. The joke was really on me, though, because I was the one watching people watching television. What happens when you start watching people watch Gogglebox? Infinite regression until the universe implodes?

The viewers (or gogglers) featured on Gogglebox are all totally unbelievable. I don’t know where producers found them, but who, apart from UKIP supporters and John Prescott, actually screams and shouts at the television? And if people like that do really exist, then they certainly wouldn’t be surrounded by friends and family. They’d be expelled from the building quicker than a Jimmy Savile impersonator at the Royal Variety performance.

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