Watch TV with Paul Flynn
THE VOLUNTARY incarceration experiment of reality TV is old news now. This year marks 20 since Nasty Nick unravelled on Big Brother. The Circle
attracted loyal devotees, but not loyal enough to give it talking-point status. There is only so much that fame-hungry, tellyready, ambitious young reality chicklets can bring to the screen in 2019. Love Island
pretty much has that covered.
In response, BBC Three offers us House Share, a promising flatmate saga. The show falls somewhere between a 24-hour feed of The Apprentice house, were the property not peopled exclusively by pricks, and one of those young person’s money diaries that fill the features pages of newspapers that dream of the return of blue passports and the abolition of avocados.
Six flatmates from the regions are handed personal cameras to document their arrival in London, willing the streets be paved with gold. The experiment is new, occasionally hilarious and a sobering reminder of the years in which the person you want to be is nearest yet furthest away. It’s an ASOS render of Mike Leigh’s Naked, when London is at its cruellest, a place that will savour a few and chew up and spit out the rest.
No-nonsense Sunderland gay boy Paul is hoping to find his fashion fortune. He struck a chord. Gobby, teary Mancunian Jess, 21, says, ‘I failed at everything but partying,’ which, I’ll admit, struck several more (I didn’t have the Kardashian eyebrows, mind). Olivia measures everything on the scales of ‘vibe’. Muna and Rian are recruitment consultants, three philosophical steps ahead of the rest. He’s your archetypal streetwear dude; she’s dispassionate enough to look built for success. The most intriguing is James, a 27-year-old Shetland carpenter who actually says, ‘Everyone is squeezed on to the tube like sardines.’ Which may have once struck chords with my nan.
I wanted to take them all by the hand and say, look, if you can learn to care above all else about money and status, London will welcome you. If not, get out quick, because it will swallow you whole. For the next six weeks, we’ll watch the city selecting the first of its human hors d’oeuvres with intrigue. God bless and good luck to them all. Begins streaming Mon 11 Nov, BBC Three