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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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A great satisfaction not having to tell your story for new every single time, which I think most major celebrities also feel. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Restless Entertainment with me Marina High.
And me Richard Osman. Hello Marina.
Hello Richard, how are you? I'm quite hot. Yeah, but we're in a new studio.
We are in a new studio.
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Chapter 2: What happened to Married At First Sight UK?
I definitely think this will be the first of a lot of stories in this area. And so does... I saw one of the lawyers for one of them saying, oh, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Lots more people, once they see people coming forward about these things, will come forward for all those shows. I mean... We already know that there are always concerns about those things.
You know, there have been a number of suicides in the wake of Love Island. There have been all sorts of things. We know they're in the U.S., which we'll get on to. I mean, there are numbers of complaints against these shows, particularly against these Chris Colan reality dating formats.
If you're a UK production company and a UK public service broadcaster as Channel 4 is running one of these things, you must be expecting this to happen because you can look around the world and see that it happens everywhere, that people eventually start complaining. And I think this is a bit like TV Faker. We're going to see lots of stuff coming out now.
I think that's right. And it's interesting to think what CPL are thinking, what Channel 4 are thinking. And it's very, very easy to get swept along on a tide of what's new in television and to understand that something like Married at First Sight is a phenomenon around the world. And to kind of say, oh, there's a new generation who grew up with reality TV.
And when you put them on it, they really understand what it is they are doing.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of the Enhanced Games?
It's not like, you know, the first series of Big Brother when everyone was... walking into a situation they didn't understand. I think people think, oh no, they think this generation are cool. I think they understand it more than we do. Yeah, that's handy. Yeah, isn't it handy? And I think that when reality TV started, duty of care is a very interesting thing.
Because as you say, it has always been there. There's always psych tests. Everyone always undergoes criminal records checks and all those types of things. And it's been tightened and tightened and tightened over the years. And, you know, a follow-up kind of interviews with people have got more and more and more. But what has really changed is the form that reality TV is taking.
When you look at that early reality TV, Big Brother, even, you know, the early series of Love Island, Survivor, it is a closed world. It's a closed set. And as producers...
which also includes, by the way, psychologists and people involved in the duty of care, you have some at least illusion of control over what's happening because you have an entire world and every single inch of that world is covered because you have a camera on every single thing. The only time that something isn't covered is if someone is under a sheet.
That's literally, but every single thing, you've got every single bit of footage, every single interaction between everybody throughout. So there's a world in which you can spot things very, very quickly. There's a world in which you can kind of convince yourself that you can be the master of that world. However, now reality shows are far more out in the real world and married at first sight.
It's much less of a precinct. Yeah. It expands outwards. The sense you're in a bubble for the participants absolutely does, but the sense they are in a bubble for the producers does not. And that's the worst combination of all, because people still have that Stockholm syndrome. People still think they have to do what the cameras want.
People still understand that there is fame to be got from either being lovable on a show or being dramatic on a show. All those things still exist. But the producers have... less control over the real world aspects of it. And I think that that's what's playing out here. And I think the avalanche begins now.
I want to talk about Chris Colan shows, particularly because I think he's written, he's talked a lot about this type of thing because they have had lots of lawsuits against their shows in the US. He's created these shows where you can't quite believe the premise, like Married at First Sight, obviously, you know,
Well, you can't believe the premise because it's not real. No. Because they're not really getting married.
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Chapter 4: How is Stephen Colbert's departure affecting late-night TV?
But we do have to understand that there are lots of issues here and we have to be very careful with it. And the producers would have taken that very, very seriously.
got so huge such a huge show so the um you know the marriage is sort of meaningless in a way it's what it leads to and the fame it leads to and the instagram followers that it leads to and it becomes such a juggernaut that the people i think who commission it and produce it do not have the capability and these are very capable people they do not have the capability to control the thing that has been
They have created something that feels like a sort of cutesy reality experience we used to do and becomes a real world thing and becomes an incredibly complex and difficult real world thing. And it's not appropriate for that to be run by the people who are running it.
Yeah. There is something else that Chris Colan says that he aspires for his shows to teach empathy and so on, but also that the conversations around the shows evolve with and reflect the culture. And one thing that I've just been thinking about this all week, because I've been thinking about it before and I know I've talked to you about this before, but
There's a sort of wider point about how toxic dating is in contemporary culture. And obviously the premise is absolutely crazy. You get married to someone and you've never met them. Only in a world where already everyone is being sort of matched by machines. And people are completely exhausted and twisted by the apps. How much you hear about app fatigue and all of this.
What used to be an organic human connection has become a sort of... algorithmically controlled market. It's an aspect of platform capitalism. It's twisted in its best sense, not in its best sense, but your real world, if you're not on one of these shows or not on anything, even that experience for people is kind of miserable and awful.
Why not get married to someone I've never met before on TV because everything else has failed?
Well, only against that general real-world backdrop that everyone is going through can these kind of bizarre, weird, artificial premises seem somehow... Maybe it's more real, maybe it's more desirable than just many of the kind of tech-mediated alternatives.
And it's, you know, sitting around a table thinking, TV shows is something I did for many, many years and it's a fun thing to do and... It seems that we're at a stage now where you think, well, just because you can doesn't mean you should. But it's hard not to when people... We have to talk about the complicity of everyone here, which is the program makers, which are the channels and the viewers.
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Chapter 5: What controversies surround the Enhanced Games?
You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, Richard?
The Thursday Murder Club, in some ways, reminds me of the A-Team.
I would now like to map each of those characters onto the A-Team and feel I probably could. I mean, Elizabeth is Hannibal and it's not even close.
That's exactly right. And Ron is howling mad Murdoch.
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Chapter 6: How do performance-enhancing drugs impact sports?
So there is a group of people who are incredible athletes who, by the way, throughout their entire career have been at the absolute cutting edge of how to train. You know, the cutting edge of this is a new way to do it, a cutting edge of perhaps you can take this powder, the cutting edge of seeing people who they're in a dorm with taking something illegal and not getting caught.
This is the world that they've grown up with. They have grown up in a world where they absolutely are sort of put through the wringer physically and mentally for the entertainment industry. of other people, but for not very much money.
So when someone says to them, what we will do, we will take you to Abu Dhabi, we will give you a series of chemical interventions, all of which are legal in the real world. And then you come to Vegas and if you win a race against three other people, I'll give you £250,000. And if you break the world record, I'll give you a million pound.
Very, very hard to imagine what other than some internal morals would stop you doing that. Yeah. As an athlete. Because how else are you making the money? Ben Proud would have been training since he was a child. Just all day, every day, putting his body through extraordinary things.
Now, Ben Proud will be aware that there will be children watching this happening and they might be tempted to follow him. And that's on his conscience. But everything else...
involved you think well i sort of get it how long how much longer have you got in this sport five years six years you want to finally make some money and so that's that's what he's doing so i understand why the athlete's doing it and wada quite rightly saying that we don't know what these drugs do and he said yeah but these people they're like formula one cars you know they've been put through like unbelievable training regimes which are absolutely not natural and which bodies are not supposed to do themselves you know
From the Coliseum and probably before, we've always watched people really... I think it was less voluntary, the Coliseum. We've watched people harm themselves for our sporting entertainment. What about boxing? What about what we know now about contact sports and degenerative disease? I mean, we know all these things. And in some cases, people are trying...
really slowly to find out because they don't want to stop watching those contact sports or they don't want to have to change the rules of those contact sports because maybe it's just a blip or maybe it's this or that. We know this. We already know that people are being made to do extraordinary and awful things to their bodies in the cause of our sporting entertainment.
Yeah, that Usyk fight over the weekend, which ended very controversially. So that sport, that's okay. And this thing in Vegas...
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Chapter 7: What are the ethical concerns regarding reality TV?
It was profitable and you had sponsors and you had lots of ad revenue because people watched it in a linear way. And when you look at all the wars, the late night wars of the 80s, but most particularly the 90s, even then though, these shows were mega expensive and it's a little bit like buying... sporting rights or something like that.
You kind of want to have it going through your pipes or you want to have it show in your channels. And it's also something that's always been there. Some people will say now to you about comedy commissioning. Why am I commissioning comedy? I mean, just because we always commission comedies. Why am I doing that? Because actually people aren't watching them.
And definitely the point at which I think The Late Show had got to, it cost $100 million a year to make and it made $60 million. So you can see that it is a lost lead.
It's there for prestige, yeah, a lost lead.
And also it's there because we've always had things like this. It's interesting, all the other rival shows...
ran reruns sort of out of respect against this last episode against this last episode you know you can see what's happened the clips are bigger than the shows i mean the clips get huge amounts of the of the opening monologue or some funny sort of moment of vignette from them that night show but they are also part of the old monoculture that is dead in the old days obviously you know you would to put it in the most crude terms red and blue state or you know republicans democrats i
Or watch these shows. They were part of the shared monoculture. Now, all of these shows are seen to be kind of hotbeds of kind of democratic degeneracy or whatever it is. And all of them, they are part of one complete siloed side of things. Yeah. which was extraordinary and never existed in the old days. There is not a shared monoculture anymore that these shows sat at a sort of broad centre of.
It doesn't exist anymore. And as I say, yeah, it was hallowed and whatever. It's interesting what he did next, Stephen Colbert. And I find this really interesting because he did this... He popped up on public access TV, which, as you know, is like mega lo-fi. And back in the old days, we thought, oh, my gosh, I can't believe America has this thing where almost anyone can make TV in Wayne's World.
And it's now like, all right, we live in a culture where almost everyone makes TV all the time, whether you're putting on TikTok or YouTube or whatever. And he hosted Only in Monroe, which is a community access program, i.e. It's a town of... Monroe, Michigan is a town of, I think, 20,000 people.
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Chapter 8: How is the landscape of late-night television changing?
CBS is going to make more money from it. The shows that are competitors to The Daily Show are stronger than they were at the time when Colbert was taken off the air. So, you know, watch this space. But Colbert is going...
You won't be able to keep these people down.
Of course you can't.
And that I think is very, very positive.
Conan has never been bigger or richer than he is now. Your reminder that we'll be talking to Steven Spielberg soon. Any questions you've ever wanted to ask Steven Spielberg, if you send them to thewrestlesentertainment at goalhanger.com and we will ask him the best or the most interesting. Any recommendations?
I really want to recommend Dear England, which is the new James Graham show. It's based on his play, but it's expanded beyond the Gareth Southgate verse into the Thomas Tuchel era. And I actually appeared in front of a select committee last week.
We haven't talked about that.
We haven't talked about it, I know. How was it? It was really interesting in lots of ways, but it was an absolute privilege to sit next to James. I think it's so fascinating. He's so interested. We talked a lot about local stories and he talked a lot about doing stuff in Nottingham and doing stuff with Sherwood, but he's also interested in these kind of
very popular, populist kind of national stories. And to write something about the England football manager, just as when he did that play quiz, which became a brilliant TV series about the millionaire coughing scandal. He just does things that people are really interested in. And I think he is a most fascinating and interesting person. And it was a privilege to sit next to him.
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