C4’s Tribe is so fake it could be called The Only Way Is Ethiopia

Following the news this week of binge-drinking chimpanzees in west Africa that get sloshed on the alcoholic sap of palm trees, some commissioning editor will be planning a reality TV series called The Ape-prentice, or maybe Keeping Up with The orangutans.

Dozens of jungle cameras fixed in the trees will capture thousands of hours of footage, to be manipulated and assembled out of context in the editing suite: the result might look like real life in the rainforest, but it’ll be as false as any human ‘scripted reality’ show.

genuine documentaries could soon be extinct. if that sounds unthinkable, consider The Tribe (C4) — a four-part series from the team that made the execrable Educating Yorkshire.

like that fly-on-the-classroom-wall format, The Tribe was masquerading as a serious study. But it felt so fake, it could have been called TowiE: The only way is Ethiopia.

Multiple cameras were rigged across four mud houses in the Hamar region, near the omo River in the country’s south-west. Ringed by a fence of wooden stakes, these oneroom thatched huts with earthen floors were home to an extended family: patriarch Ayke Muko, his two wives, assorted grown-up children and 16 grandchildren.

Ayke was a spirited old curmudgeon, swearing at the little ’uns and moaning that the womenfolk didn’t give him enough respect, like an Ethiopian Alf garnett. He was constantly on the lookout for a bit extra, whether it was a free dinner or a backhander from the film crew. His wives had got the measure of him. Kerri Bodo, the older woman, remarked slyly that Ayke used to be handsome, ‘and now he looks like a baboon’. The old fella pretended to be shocked but he loved it.

His sons were conducting laborious negotiations with the next village to buy a wife for their youngest brother. There was some dispute over how many goats the girl was worth, but the real purpose of the stalling seemed to be that, as long as they were talking, the families couldn’t be feuding.

Carefully selected shots encouraged us to imagine, without explicitly saying as much, that these people were primitives cut adrift in the 21st century.

The women wore their hair in beads, with ritual welts scarring their backs and garlands of stones across their bare chests.

The men were shy and laconic, loping around with rifles slung across their shoulders: they had no money, but counted their wealth in livestock.

But a carelessly framed shot near the end told a rather different story. As Ayke Muko hobbled away from the camera, grumbling to himself, we saw a couple of modern buildings, with timber frames, concrete walls and metal roofs — solid western prefabs.

what else were we not meant to see? it would be strange if these people didn’t have access to vehicles and modern medicines. They certainly had mobile phones.

we’re meant to believe that Ayke Muko’s family are the Tribe That Time Forgot . . . just as we’re supposed to accept that the Kardashians are genuinely talented. Reality TV producers must assume that we’re all very gullible indeed.

The week’s telly has been full of disappointments, especially the unoriginal action- drama The interceptor. A two-part adaptation of an iain Banks novel, Stonemouth (BBC2), looked at first as if there was little new about it, too.

Christian Cooke played the cocky Jack-the-lad, visiting his home town after two years on the run from the local gangster boss. That set-up was similar to Top of The lake, 2013’s dark thriller f r om new Zealand starring Elisabeth Moss. The cut-price crime lord was even played by the s a me actor in both productions, Peter Mullan.

But the stale feeling of deja vu was quickly overpowered by the strength of the storytelling. As in all Banks’s novels, gothic childhood horrors haunted the characters — in this case, a paint- balling excursion interrupted by a swordwielding maniac.

And Mullan was superb, as he always is. Even if you can’t stand edgy, cynical dramas about drugdealing Scottish businessmen, you have to watch his first scene — Mullan manages to be bone-chilling while doing aerobics along to a children’s video game.

Dancing purple dinosaurs have never looked so sinister.