Next stop, D-list

Channel 4's hit show Coach Trip has always been a rather downmarket affair. Everything, from the casting to the itinerary, seems designed to make viewers feel as though all that's missing is Reg Varney.

So forgive me for feeling a little cynical about the recently announced 'Celebrity Coach Trip'. We're all fully aware of just how debased the word 'celebrity' has become, so it stands to reason that the new edition of the travel/game show isn't likely to be attracting too many A-listers.

Not that anyone seems to have told host Brendan Sheerin. In an interview with Digital Spy, the camp coach commandant talks viewers through the illustrious roll-call of names we can expect to see queuing to use the chemical toilet on board.

After several years of playing peace-keeper to a bunch of argumentative chavs and horny teenagers, it's clear that Brendan is delighted to have a bus full of stars to raise the tone of the show. He says "There's great excitement about it. My first feeling was, 'well what celebrities will we have?' If there are a lot of egos, it might be a problem. But they weren't like that at all. They just do extraordinary jobs, you know."

Extraordinary jobs? Really? Given that the most famous people taking part in the new series are the Chuckle Brothers, it's safe to assume that Brendan is a less than reliable witness.

Imogen Thomas and Bianca Gascoigne? Carol Harrison and Ingrid Tarrant? Raef and Ben from The Apprentice? They don't even have jobs, never mind extraordinary ones.

Funnily enough, despite Brendan's glee at playing host to this glittering array of stars, it's clear that he's already got his eye on making the leap from audience member to participant. Asked if he'd be willing to appear on a celebrity reality show, he answers "I'm too busy doing Coach Trip really, but I would, I would. I'd be up for anything, within reason. I think it would be a lot of fun actually."

At this rate, we'll soon have celebrity editions of some of our best loved shows featuring anyone who's been seen jamming a screwdriver into an ATM on CCTV. Or anyone who's had a letter printed in their local weekly free paper. 

Join me in the race to the bottom - we're almost there...

Neighbourhood watching

As the last few clumps of firework ash slowly drop from the skies over Elstree, Big Brother fans will be contemplating life without their favourite dose of carefully stage-managed 'reality'. After ten years spent dominating the schedules, the front pages of the tabloids, and conversations around the water-cooler, TV junkies are facing an uncertain future.

Or are they? It turns out that Channel 4 has another trick up its sleeve to satiate our hunger for interminable shows about ordinary people - stretching that particular definition to breaking point in the process. 'Seven Days' is a bold new concept in democratic documentary programming, in effect turning editorial control over to the viewers.

Focusing on the lives of the eclectic people of London's Notting Hill, the new show is described as "part-reality show, part-soap and part-documentary." Presumably, the eclecticism might actually involve a slightly more diverse crowd than the well-heeled white faces who exclusively populate the borough in the mind of Richard Curtis.

Ostensibly another long-running show about regular people doing regular things, it promises to make the output of Mike Leigh look like Michael Bay's back catalogue. But what's really different this time, is the role that viewers will play in the ongoing series.

According to executive producer Stephen Lambert, "This programme not only disobeys that conventional reality TV rule, it actively encourages it, through a new interactive part of the show called Chat-Nav." This oddly named function will enable viewers to connect with the show's characters between episodes, "offering advice on dilemmas and decisions they are making in their lives." It's not enough that these people will be suffering the trials and tribulations of every day life in front of a bank of cameras, they'll also have illiterate teenagers from Birmingham advising them on how to handle that big job interview.

Since the show takes place in the 'real world', its participants will also be encouraged to discuss pressing social issues - which hopefully will amount to more than just Katie Price's parenting skills or Gemma Arterton's shorts. Given the current state of debate around current affairs, it's a little ambitious to expect everyday people to get caught up in a heated exchange around matters of "religion, morality and sexuality." If the show's cast are anything like the 'ordinary people' we've seen on Big Brother, we'll be lucky if they know how to boil an egg.

Channel 4 might be trying to convince us that they've selected a fascinating cast of 'real people', but the claim that they "wouldn't think twice about revealing all about their lives" suggests another group of intolerable exhibitionists.

Another issue that may hinder the success of this admittedly bold concept, is the troubling issue of self-awareness. It's now commonplace for anyone leaving a reality show to complain about damning character assassinations planned in the editors' room. As though anyone with more than a few weeks' experience on Avid could misrepresent a mild-mannered university student as a chain-smoking, racist nymphomaniac.

With the show being aired in real time, the participants will be able to see how they're coming across to the general public and adapt their behaviour accordingly. The moment they see how the press is interpreting their behaviour, it's guaranteed that they'll dial those characteristics up to 11, making the fly-on-the-fourth-wall show about as authentic as Balamory.

Lambert might claim that "Seven Days is a new kind of reality, what happens when you take the walls down. In reality shows like Big Brother in the past we have put people in an enclosed space and watched what happened to them. Seven Days is going to break down those walls and break all the normal rules."

Unfortunately, the biggest rule the show looks set to break, is the unwritten one about "Ignore thy neighbour". Modern London life has become so insular that if someone's house caught fire, their neighbours would only intervene to ask them to keep the noise down. If we struggle to care about the people who live on our own street, what makes Channel 4 think we'll give two hoots about someone else's neighbours?

Could it BE more over?

It's the end of an era.

After what seems like an eternity, Channel 4 (and its multiple offshoots) have ended their fifteen year deal with Warner Bros to exclusively air Friends.

Even though the show ended five years ago, it's become such a staple of the media landscape that it's hard to turn on the TV without seeing the giant porcelain greyhound, the peephole picture-frame, or a thin Matthew Perry spitting a spray of water out of his mouth.

In fact, Friends has become so ubiquitous, that it's hard to remember that, for the best part of a decade, it was the best comedy show on TV. Maybe we take it for granted, like a moving version of the test card picture of the girl with the terrifying clown ragdoll.

Even now, the show manages to drum up daily viewing figures of around 400,000, despite the fact that the majority of the population must have committed all 236 episodes to memory.

The E4 schedulers must be flicking through page after page of blank diary sheets, wondering how they're ever going to fill all that space without Monica's OCD, Rachel's amazing hair or Ross's borderline paedophilia.

As for The Rembrandts, who performed the show's nosebleed-inducing theme tune, they're going to take a massive hit on their royalties now that it's not going to be broadcast around the clock.

Head of Channel 4 acquisitions Gill Hay says "It's time to say goodbye to old Friends and welcome new ones, in the form of more comedy, drama and entertainment from the US and UK. We are incredibly proud to have been the home of Friends for so long, but at a point when the channel is undergoing a period of creative renewal it felt like the right time to part company."

It's a sad time for anyone who's grown accustomed to their daily fix of Central Perk. Let's just keep our fingers crossed that BBC takes note and follows suit by finally putting 'Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps' out of its misery. At least Friends had the decency to be funny.

Who's watching Big Brother?

After a decade spent dominating the tabloids and gossip magazines, it seems like the sun is finally setting on Endemol's most popular show. It was announced today that next year's Big Brother will be the last to appear on Channel 4. Surprisingly, Five, Sky and ITV2 have already come forward to announce they won't be picking up the contract for the fly-on-the-wall reality institution.

With ratings at an all-time low, Channel 4 director of television Kevin Lygo has said that '... the programme has reached a natural end point on Channel 4 and it's time to move on.' It seems that watercoolers up and down the country are playing host to a new set of conversations that don't involve a houseful of fame-seeking wannabes.

The rot began to set in back in 2007, when Celebrity Big Brother was marred by the race row around Shilpa Shetty. Although the ratings shot up, with people unable to look away from the drama imploding on-screen, it was clear that the format was not infallible. Attempts to refresh the concept saw Channel 4 create Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack - which proved about as appealing as John Craven's bukake Newsround.

This latest series has been notable only for the number of housemates who've given up and walked out early. Some of the more recent additions spent so little time in the house it seemed as though they'd left before their introductory VT had even finished playing.

Big Brother himself has taken the news particularly hard, taking his anger out on the unwitting (and witless) housemates. Having been told that they were boring and needed to spice things up, the remaining inmates decided to break into the camera runs, only to then find out that they had forfeited the £100,000 prize as a result.

Despite the fact that TV audiences have already moved on, the summer will no doubt feel very different without Marcus Bentley's tongue-in-cheek Geordie narration, or Davina stomping around in a black dress, bellowing like an insane bag lady. So let's be thankful for ten years of drunken fights, flirtations and fumblings. Not to mention one ex-housemate's impressive impersonation of a bottlebank.

Sadly Big Brother, you have been evicted.