In all its various guises, Big Brother has now been around for more than two decades. And on Sunday night, after stints on both Channel 4 and Channel 5, the original and apparently unkillable reality format will make its long-awaited debut on ITV.
But television has changed immeasurably in the last 20 years. In the early days, Big Brother made waves because there was nothing else like it. Now, you can barely move for all the tributes and rip-offs and improvements stinking up the place. Does Big Brother still have anything to say in 2023? It’s impossible to tell. However, on Friday night I got to tour the brand new Big Brother house, 48 hours before its housemates arrive. The experience left me with a number of important insights that I shall now impart with as much gravelly authority as I can muster.
1. The Big Brother house is massive. As well as everything you’d expect (kitchen, bedroom, outside area, big sofa that will almost certainly become medically unsanitary after a week), it also contains an upstairs area with a secondary ‘breakout lounge’ that seems designed to come into play during tasks. In short, it feels like the least punishingly claustrophobic Big Brother house yet. But this doesn’t necessarily mean it is a nice place to live, largely because:
2. The Big Brother house is extremely colourful. On entering the house I heard someone remark that it is like being in the Teletubbies house. I’ve been in the Teletubbies house! It is exactly like that! The simple act of going to bed involves walking down a corridor done up to look like a blinding rainbow archway. It is punishing. Also:
Photograph: Matt Frost/ITV
3. Someone will definitely snap an ankle in the Big Brother house. The only way to access the upstairs area is on a wide staircase made of deceptively smooth wood. I predict that, three days in, a particularly exuberant housemate will get drunk, try to walk down the stairs in socks, slip, fall, shatter a number of bones in their feet and legs, and Big Brother will force the housemates to wear mandatory Big Brother grippy-soled Uggs for the remainder of the series as a safety precaution.
4. The Big Brother house is extremely warm. Warm like a top-floor new-build flat in July. It is the sort of heat that makes you colossally drowsy. Which might be a problem, since blockbuster reality TV shows are not usually formed around a dozen sleepy people constantly drifting off on a sofa.
5. The Big Brother house is covered in pigeons. There are fake pigeons everywhere. The garden. The living room. Everywhere. What do they symbolise? Freedom? Hope? Disease? Poor toilet habits? We’ll have to wait and see.
Photograph: Matt Frost/ITV
6. The Big Brother house has a big diary room chair. Some have already claimed that it is the biggest Diary Room chair in Big Brother history. So, you know, that’s something.
7. The Big Brother house contains vanishingly few orgy opportunities. Previous iterations benefited from an enormous hot tub; a feature that was once memorably used to host what the tabloids might call a ‘romp’. This Big Brother house contains only a tiny hot tub, capable of fitting a maximum of four housemates, and only then if they’re willing to cram themselves in so tightly they risk becoming permanently lodged.
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8. Nobody will smoke in the Big Brother house. Previous Big Brothers have used the smoking area to gossip and plot, but this is no longer the case. If any of the 2023 intake want to smoke, they will be directed to a windowless, camera-free cupboard that can legally only hold one person at a time. What is the interior of the smoking room like? I don’t know; during the tour I tried opening the door and someone screamed at me.
9. I would almost certainly have a near-immediate breakdown in the Big Brother house. It is too bright and too warm. There is only one bedroom, which seems like a perfect recipe for broken sleep. Also remember that, once the show starts, the house will be absolutely jammed to the gills. In short, it seems like an absolute nightmare.
10. Nobody will escape from the Big Brother house. Which isn’t to say that they can’t – if any 2023 housemates are reading this, there’s a hidden doorway by the water butt in the garden that would probably open if you kicked it hard enough – but that they won’t. Because if you escape the Big Brother house, all you’ll find is a car park in an industrial estate in the howling wilderness of Harlesden. All in all, staying put in a boiling Teletubbies house with a bunch of Ugg-wearers is probably the lesser of two evils.