Episode cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Leonard Rossiter | ... | Co-Ordinator Ugo Priest | |
Suzanne Neve | ... | Deanie Webb | |
Tony Vogel | ... | Nat Mender | |
Brian Cox | ... | Lasar Opie | |
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Vickery Turner | ... | Misch |
George Murcell | ... | Grels | |
Martin Potter | ... | Kin Hodder | |
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Lesley Roach | ... | Keten Webb |
Hira Talfrey | ... | Betty | |
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Patricia Maynard | ... | Nurse |
Trevor Peacock | ... | Custard Pie Expert | |
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Brian Coburn | ... | Custard Pie Expert |
Derek Fowlds | ... | Custard Pie Expert | |
Wolfe Morris | ... | Custard Pie Expert | |
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Braham Murray | ... | Custard Pie Expert |
Set in a future when the world is dominated and run by television, where language has become almost redundant and all "tensions" - love, war, hate, loyalty - have been removed. Overpopulation is a problem, so there are gluttony programmes to put people off food and pornography programmes to put them off sex. There is artsex and sportsex, and now this - the year of the Sex Olympics. Audience attention begins to wane, however, until TV executive Ugo Priest works on a new concept - a reality-based programme in which a couple is stranded on a bleak island, without the aid of any modern technology, and their efforts to survive filmed twenty-four hours a day. A concept which may sound familiar in the age of reality TV... Written by UK DVD blurb
That's how Nancy Banks Smith - the greatest TV reviewer ever - described this play.
I saw this play as part of a BBC archive trial. It is funny to hear one producer suggest a new idea for a programme: "I know let's put some people on a deserted island and just watch them." 32 years before Survivor or Big Brother. Of course, Nigel Kneale probably got paid £1000. John De Mol milked about Euro 1bn from the actual show.
Not all the predictions are true - the general public are shown to be lifeless drones who just watch TV all day and aside from Liverpool this has not come true.
Also, the viewer satisfaction ratings at the time were low and I think if I had seen the play in 1968 I would not have liked it as much. We like it now because of its predictive quality rather than for its artistic merits.
Finally, Banks Smith said you had to see the play in colour and only a B&W print exists.
BTW, there have been deaths from reality shows - suicide of an evictee on the first reality show - Family Robinson, the forerunner of Survivor. Suicide of an evictee on a US boxing TV show.