Davina and Rylan to front Big Brother show for E4

@Brekkie - That is the new Australian Big Brother logo.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(Australian_season_12)

It was built on Metropolitan Open Land under the proviso that it was only temporary. Metropolitan Open Land has similar protections to green belt, so it would have been nigh on impossible to extend/build a perm structure. Interestingly the initial planning approval was only for the duration of series 1 - so they were lucky to get 2 years there.

Strange to think I can pinpoint events in my life by those early Big Brother series.

Weirdly I liked series 4, its probably the most gentle of all the series and did give us Jon Tickle!

Series 5 ramped it up, fight night, Nadia winning. I remember going to the pub the night of Nadias win and being the talk that night.

I think i gave up after series 7 when it got really daft!

Been hunting for it today but no luck - eventually found out it was called Big Brother Small World but can't find even any clips of it.

I agree. I liked it that the house was far away from the crowds. From BB3 onwards they often used to hear the crowds chanting things on eviction nights and it felt too close. I did prefer the house used from BB3 onwards though.

Does anyone remember the comedic documentary shown after BB9, which mercilessly ridiculed the housemates after they'd left the house? I remember finding it pretty incredible at the time - Channel 4 mocking their number 1 programme seemed almost like an internal mutiny to me, especially given just a year and a half earlier we'd had all the Jade/Shilpa controversy, although admittedly by then ratings were on the slide and far from their peak.

The main memory of it is a housemate called Mario gleefully opening a package from Endemol said to contain fan mail addressed to him they'd received, only to immediately lose interest when there were only two letters inside.

Yeah, for the first series you had episodes at 11pm on Tuesdays to Thursdays, the Friday eviction and another show at 8pm on Mondays which would have the psychiatrists on it. As you say, it was moved to 10pm during that run.

In the second series - the best series - they had a show on Saturdays called Big Brother Reveals More, which I used to really enjoy, it featured some things they hadn't had time to show on the daily programmes so it was often the sillier and more whimsical bits, and it would end with the eviction from the housemates' perspective. One of the downsides of having more daily episodes is that you lost the more reflective, low key stuff like that. I remember series two was brought forward to launch on the Saturday right at the last minute, in the Radio Times they made reference throughout to it launching on the Monday and then when you got to the listings pages it was on the Saturday - the reason being Survivor was launching on the Monday.



I really liked series four, I liked Big Brother when everyone was nice and got on with each other, I know you can say it was boring but I like boring programmes. And as you say, Jon Tickle was the best housemate of all.

The exact moment I gave up on it was the fight in Series 5, specifically because on the next live show on the Friday, Davina just introduced the show by saying something like "Ooh, it all kicked off in the house this week!" and laughed it off, and I didn't like that at all because it was a really unpleasant moment that made for unsettling viewing and I don't think they ever really apologised to viewers who were upset or covered it with the seriousness it deserved.

It's the sort of cake-and-eat-it approach that was to eventually lead to the racism stuff, Channel Four pretending they had nothing to do with it and whatever went on in the house was entirely up to the housemates and they were just dutifully and impartially reporting it. Despite the fact that if the programme didn't exist, it wouldn't be happening.

I’m the sure the episodes in the very first week (post the launch show and pre the first eviction) were only about 10 or 15 mins?

I can’t remember that ever being the case. The first few series didn’t have an eviction for 2 full weeks, and the first series never actually had a “launch” show. The first episode showed them entering (which was very low key) but also showed the first few days’ worth of content. You may be getting confused by the amount of coverage each day got rather than the length of episodes?

Leaving it two weeks before an eviction worked much better in my opinion - gave the audience an opportunity get to know the full cast, and gave them an opportunity to get to know each other before they had to turn on each other for nominations. Arguably what killed BB4 was the launch night eviction resulting in one of the most entertaining housemates being booted out on a first impression!

One small gripe I have is that when they go to the ad break, they don’t use the correct music. Just a bit chopped from the end of the theme music. When they come back from the ads the into break music is used .

Somewhat related to BBUK, isn't the music in the Pink Casino sponsor bumpers the same music used in one of DeMarkay's mocks?

The first celebrity series that used the same house was for Comic Relief and had a short ten minute episode on BBC One each night.