Thursday, August 28, 2014

Two TV programmes, two very different reactions.


“Still absolutely reeling from the injustice of last night” is how one person described it. “As if the BBC hadn't shamed themselves enough recently” quotes another. I genuinely don't think I'll ever get over it I'm crying adds a third. So what caused all this outrage? Quite simply they are all talking about Wednesday nights BBC TV Show Great British Bake Off.
For one of the challenges on the show they had to make a Baked Alaska for which they needed ice cream. The contestants made the ice cream themselves and put it in the freezer before making the other parts of the dessert. The show showed one of the contestants, Iain discovering that his ice cream had been taken out of the freezer by Diane, one of the other contestants. Iain, realizing that the ice cream had melted chucked the whole dessert in the bin and so had nothing to show the judges at the end. Mary Berry described this as ‘unacceptable’ and Iain was the baker removed from the show this week.
The reaction on twitter was fast and furious. Diane, a 79 year old Woman’s Institute Judge has been described as evil and a witch by various people on twitter and has been roundly vilified for her alleged ‘sabotage’ of another contestants bake.  At one point 6 out of the top 10 trending topics on twitter was Great British Bake Off related. One ‘Bring back Iain’ tweet has already received nearly 3,000 re-tweets.  Not that it will happen, the whole series has already been filmed. I wonder what it will be like if Diane ends up winning the competition.
It is the sense that this goes against the values of fair play and justice that has caused such an incredibly reaction. The reaction on twitter was more entertaining that the TV show itself. I wonder if the BBC knew that this would get such a huge reaction. The must have expected some reaction as they plugged the incident before the show got aired. To me car-crash TV at its worse.
Compare this to Channel 4’s The Last Leg. A show started during the London Paralympics, hosted by disabled comic Adam Hills which looked at the days sporting events from the Paralympics. Being live it encouraged people to ask those difficult questions that people were afraid to ask about disability using the hashtag #isitok. It has gone on to be a show about the week’s events in general but still with an anti-discriminatory theme. It’s a show that I love.
Following  the death of comic Robin Williams, Adam Hills made a passionate tribute the man and mocked members of the Westboro Baptist Church who planned to pickets Robin’s funeral claiming the he promoted homosexuality through his various roles and often ‘mocked god’. In the last episode Adam posted a tweet stating that he was supporting the Planting Peace’s Fight Hate with Love campaign and that they were raising funds for the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital.  A charity that Robin Williams was openly passionate about. Planting Peace’s HQ is directly opposite the Westboro Baptist church and have a philosophy of addressing acts of hate and intolerance with compassion and love. So their hate of Robin Williams they are turning to Love for a cause that Robin loved. Adam Hills asked during the show for people to re-tweet his tweet and people have done that in their thousands. However, people have done more than that. Whilst Adam never said on the show to donate money, people have done. At the time of writing nearly $45,000 has been donated by viewers of the show. They were not prompted to do so. This was not a TV appeal for money. Values of injustice has once again came to the fore. For a relatively small show late on a Friday night to get such a reaction is tremendous. All credit to Channel 4, Adam Hills, and all involved in this wonderful piece of TV.
So two different TV shows, two completely different outcomes but both as a result of peoples values of justice and fair play.
 
 
 

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