While we in the UK genuflect before the shrine of reality TV and its patron saint, St Jade of Essex, in Russia, minister of interior and KGB tough-guy Rashid Nurgaliyev has proposed making Dom 2, the long-running Russian version of Big Brother, an enemy of the state.
Dom 2 has been running, continually, since 2004, with some housemates remaining un-evicted in the house ever since then, like rotting food at the bottom of a Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet. It is the longest-running reality show in the world.
But now the KGB wants to get tough, saying it is corrupting the nation’s youth and rendering them into passive zombies (which I would have thought the KGB approved of, but what do I know).
Nurgaliyev snarled:
“The first option is that, as what we see in the Dom-2 show is a criminal offence, the program must be taken off air. The second option is that the company is fined for broadcasting illegal material; the sum of these fines would be so significant that several of them would be enough to bring the company to the brink of bankruptcy. The third option is that we refer the matter to psychiatrists.”
Great idea. Throw the producers into the madhouse, along with the executives behind Big Brother, Strictly Come Dancing, Im A Celebrity, Wife-Swap, The Bachelor, Survivor, Temptation Island, and of course Paris Hilton’s British Best Friend.
And then film them.
You could call it ‘I’m A Reality TV Executive, Get Me Out Of Here’.
