Big Brother was good last night

I can’t say I watch the show very much these days in honesty, although I do keep tabs on it, but I always love a good Big Brother launch night for the spectacle and the thrill and excitement of being able to legitimately judge other people from a VT made to make them look as daft as possible and then make jokes about it on Twitter. I can’t say I’m really a fan of telling people who was going in before launch night because a lot of the excitement is in the surprise but there we are.

Anyway, yesterday deigned to play with the form for a bit (showing them in make-up, sometimes interviewing them live backstage) but for once they had an opening night twist that lived up to the hype, partly because it had never been done before (Willis suggested on air that “they’d wanted to do it for years but were too scared”) and partly because it was basically the result that everyone (well, most people) wanted.

Viewers were given two minutes to vote on the app to pick five people to face a “devious twist”, where they might be rewarded or punished and it would effect their time in the house, also hinting that for one of them their time (they’ve gone big on the Timebomb theme which they’ll forget after a fortnight, but I digress) might be up. The five people selected, they went out into the garden and had to pick one of five differently coloured “timebombs” to stand behind. One by one the housemates were asked to pull the pin – the first contestant won three weeks of immunity, the second housemate has to nominate face to face throughout his entire stay in the house. The third player gets a personal luxury shopping budget she can use any time, even if the house fails a food task. This left two contestants left – they were told one timebomb was empty, the final one was instant eviction. They had the option to swap, they pulled the pins and BOOM! one of the more awful housemates goes just 90 minutes after arriving.

On a production level it was quite brave/stupid, effectively one HM going at random, there was a real chance that one of the more likeable characters would have gone and that would have backfired spectacularly, as it turns out it was a great telly result, and hilarious and well played by the production to have their “best bits” lined up.

We did ponder on Twitter if there was some quite clever production manipulation going on – @4randomwords (Only Connect writer and Plymouth Argyle fan Mike Turner) suggesting that early crowd favourite Jack was always going to go for the green one (which turned out to be immunity) as it’s the Argyle team colour (if you watched it you’ll note he mentioned his team about thirty times). Whereas Simon who clearly liked to be centre of attention with his vocabulary consisting of the word “SHOWBIZ!!!” was likely to go for the one in the middle.

Or possibly it really was just down to basic chance. About ten years ago we tried coining the term “situation gameshow” for reality shows like Big Brother – it didn’t catch on (it does sound a bit wanky), but it seems like a more relevant term for the show than ever, especially as the HMs are rarely allowed to just get on with it and there will always be some kind of activity laid on for them for them to react to on a daily basis.

BETTING: I am good at betting on Big Brother. Based on first night impressions…

• Look for people who look like they might have a good story arc. Joel the young Welsh Conservative politician looks like he might have an interesting journey waiting for him (and also young Welsh guys who look like a fish out of water tend to do well – see Glyn, more recently Sam who won it a few years ago).
• “Bad boy” Nick seems the anti-Joel in a way – clearly puts on a massive front but seems not very confident really underneath in a way that might prove appealing over the series. Also, he’s quite funny. Has the penalty of having to nominate face to face throughout.
• Chloe and Sarah look like decent Northern girls-next-door types. Sarah’s VT contained an above-average amount of bravado immediately betrayed by her entrance interview. Aaron seems like a nice guy as well.
• Jack (aka Pieface) is the people’s early favourite but I reckon you’d be throwing your money away – the early fave rarely wins, and I struggle to see what he’d bring to the house over ten weeks other than being a bit larger than average and having an accent.
• The lads Danny and Cristian, almost inevitably the more awful one will end up getting an early comeuppance, the other will float to the final where they’ll finish fourth.
• If I’m putting money on who will be the first evicted by the public proper, my money would be on Adjoa whose VT was a bit try hard.

We’ll probably continue to watch Bit On The Side as and when though.