Extras:
Audition tapes and interviews, Multi-camera angles (Leprechaun Orgy Night &
Piggygate), Anouska in Big Brother Australia
Producer:
Pippa Healy
Narrator:
Marcus Bentley
One of the criticisms that faced Big Brother 4
was that it was boring in comparison to the previous three series.
Yes, it wasn't the best and once Jon had been evicted there wasn't anyone I
thought was deserving of the £70,000 prize, especially not the chump who
did win, Cameron. It all seemed too staged when he set off to South
Africa for a few days (oh, why did he have to come back?), and once he returned
the cameras focused on him way too much and twisted the truth. Example: The
night before Jon was evicted, Cameron was seen on the "Live" footage stating
how he'd like to urinate in his shower gel, deficate in his shoes and hold him
by his throat and punch his eyes into the back of his head. What did the C4
summary show of that? Nothing! Just made him look the fun-loving type by
showing him being "cr-a-a-a-a-zy" on the Friday, and less of a mad religious
wanker.
At this point, for anyone who isn't full conversant with those who took part,
have a read of my
Big Brother 4 Updates
page, which was updated during the series with news of who was evicted and
when Lisa arrived. There's also a complete list of who featured in the show and
when they were evicted.
Talking of the "Live" footage, even on the fourth series they still can't get
a clue about how to mask the sound properly when people swear before the
watershed, talk frankly about sex or mention people outside the house. It
was shown on last year's Big Brother Little Brother how someone watching
the live footage will note the start/stop times to mute such material for
which the second person will action accordingly. Why is it then that during
the day we'll hear the sound of trains passing (apparently) or see footage of
the chicken run (clearly the only reason why it's there) for more than 50% of
the time? The excuses don't wash Channel 4. It's clear some of these are held
back from broadcast so they can be included on the eventual DVD. Then again,
why should they even pretend to be accountable? They made that point clear
when they cancelled Right To Reply.
Now on to the presenters. I can't stand Davina McCall. She is clearly the
most irritating and talent-free person on TV and does she really need to
SHOUT ALL THE TIME!!!? Contrast that with Little Brother's Dermot,
someone who pre-BB I didn't rate at all, but he's clearly found his niche with
this and knows his audience well, despite too many repetitive catchphrases.
So, most of the time, I'm "lovin' his work".
BB4 also saw an increase in the revenue-hogging as Channel 4 stuck their red
dot over not just this programme, but practically everything else they could
get away with - then again, they've done that since last November when
Celebrity Big Brother 2 began. They must really hate their audience.
On the other hand, in a reversal of the '80s red triangle, I like to think that
the red dot is there to point out all the programmes that *aren't*
worth watching.
All the interactive games played via Sky Digital wanted to charge you for the
privelidge, so I took no notice in them apart from the free sample about chicken
feed which was terrible and didn't entice me to play even if the next levels
were free.
The cost of text voting was increased from 10p to 25p ("plus your usual text
message rate", so another 10p then) and they even brought in extra texting
nonsense in the form of the card game Pelmanism, over late-night live
streaming and pointless polls, such as when Gaetano came over from South
Africa and we were asked to state our position as to what we thought of him:
"Hello Gae" or "Walk on by". Would the last Channel 4 executive
left to lose their dignity please turn out the lights.
Hence, it's the constant forcing down our throat to "press red" (see more
about this at
this page),
the terrible blanking of sound, the endless prostituting to text in about
nothing at all, and one more thing - Davina, Davina, Davina, that's killing
this series, not the people they pick to go in the house.
As for this DVD, it skims through the 9 weeks the house, but does it have the
longevity? I'm a big fan of this show and watch every C4 summary show, some
of the live footage and every edition of BBLB, without voting once - although I broke with tradition when
it came time to vote Jon back into the house and I placed one vote for him and
one for Lisa (just to annoy the housemates), but even after that he failed
to deliver after the final votes - but once the whole thing's over and you've
overdosed on the subsequent Big Brother Diaries, how often will you watch
Anouska's saggy boobs, Justine's unwarranted nastiness towards Jon,
Sissy's ginger whinging, Federico stepping out of the pedalo to retrieve
chewing gum, Jon for being the people's champion, Tania's "Piggygate",
Gos' failure to do anything of interest, Lisa's two fingers, Nush being
"just naked all day" (well, not quite), Steph's cleaning, Scott's vacantness,
Ray's aggressive behaviour and Cameron's murderous intentions towards Jon?
The DVD is presented in 4:3 fullscreen, as it has always been filmed, and
the picture isn't as good as it could be all of the time, the background
pixellating when it's dominated by a single colour. The stereo sound is fine,
but purely functional, not that you'd expect anything else for this series.
The extras are as follows:
Multi-angle sequences (5½ mins):
Two here. One of the "Leprechaun Orgy night" (but without much of the orgy),
and one of Gaetano calling Tania a pig, which was later dubbed "Piggygate".
One angle is what you saw on TV, with various camera cuts, while the other
is a static camera in the corner of the room looking down on the housemates.
Anouska in Big Brother Australia (3½ mins):
A brief compilation of our show's first evictee going down under, but she
didn't get it on fully with anyone there, despite the hot tub action. I'd
rather have seen summary episodes of this than Cameron's few days in South
Africa.
Audition tapes and interviews (62 mins):
Does exactly what it says on the tin. It's fun to see the audition tapes, and
the interviews are snippets that were used sporadically throughout the series,
but it's annoying you can't fast-forward through them. This only applies to
this part of the DVD.
There are 21 chapters throughout the highlights which is reasonable, the
main menu contains the programme's theme and a small amount of animation,
but the disc contains no subtitles.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
