Deep Fake Neighbour Wars

Stella Street was better.

Phil Cornwall and John Session did a better job in the 1990s.

They played all the celeb neighbours between them. We had Micheal Caine, Joe pesci, al Pacino, Dirk bodgart, Jimmy hill. Keith Richards and mick Jagger ran the corner shop. There was a 1960s flashback special with the Beatles.

Stella Street was better.

Phil Cornwall and John Session did a better job in the 1990s.

They played all the celeb neighbours between them. We had Micheal Caine, Joe pesci, al Pacino, Dirk bodgart, Jimmy hill. Keith Richards and mick Jagger ran the corner shop. Watch Stella Stree.

First things first. The technology is amazing, sinister bang up to date , whatever you want to describe it as . Where it goes horrendously wrong for this series is after the wonderment of this modern magic fades . The scripts and humour are awful , it's not so much a new slant on the neighbours from hell genre , more a heavily scripted attempt at a contrived humorous version and that's where it fails badly . The attraction of the dodgy neighbours genre is that it's real people and real situations . The spontaneous reactions and behaviour. The cringeworthy " that's just like" or " what an idiot , I'll bet so and so could be like that" . This series lacks that 100% because it's played and presented like a bad z list movie with a poor plot , it's like a short set piece within a bigger comedy show you sit through to get to the good stuff only they've decided to make a full show of. It's awful.

This was so dodgy. ITV2 as well. It wasn't on some hole of a channel you accidentally find at 4am when most shows are shopping channels and you want to find literally anything to watch.

It was on ITV2, in a slot previously "owned" by Family Guy for the last few weeks.

The show starts with some "legal disclaimer" crap which is obviously aimed at, or a genuine legal loophole to prevent the celebrities "involved", from suing them.

I hope they all sue them. Kim Kardashian is a hero of the modern era, they clearly have the means to deepfake her doing ANYTHING on Camera for clout. ANYTHING she wouldn't have done genuinely on camera. Disgraceful.

No but really, the visual side of the show was amazing, they clearly could have put absolutely any celebrity in absolutely any situation and it look real. If they had paid as much for the scripts/comedy as the deepfake element there's a tiny chance people would have been more forgiving.

Deeply unethical, stealing someone's identity for any means should be illegal, even more so when using for capital gain.

The only time it should be OK is when the original person agrees to it, never mind the rabbit hole of family members permitting the use of a dead persons likeness. I hope any of these celebrities sue ITV for this trash.

Even with clear messaging that this is a fake, the clips can easily be cropped and taking out of context and mistaken for real.

ITV yet again pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable on TV, have they gone too far this time ? I hope so but I don't hold my breath as they made this after the disgusting deepfake of the queen (itv or maybe channel 4). That should be been the warning but here we are.

I mean, I read "deep fake" in the title, but I was initially convinced that Idris et al had conspired to meta-spoof the overrated "artificial intelligence" scare, and were participating in a sly, ironic TV coup with live actors. I was ecstatic! I mean, the actual real actors/shills could have actually done this show and it would have rocked as self-effacing irony!

But then I saw Greta and realized...wait, this cannot be...there is no conceivable universe in which Greta could be either funny or informal, and thus I transitioned from hysterical to apoplectic, as I began to accept that these are actually, really, true deep fakes, if indeed they are (the only convincing evidence for this is that neither Idris, nor Greta appear in the IMDB creds).

As I have no actual truck with shills, radicals and corporate-sponsored professional alarmists of any stripe, I actually thought, for a brief moment, that Greta was capable of cordiality, earthiness, and mirth! It was a bit deflating to realize that none of the portrayed actors were capable of engineering this sort of TV coup for themselves. Omg, how crazy is that--this is how good the show is!

But, I have to take a deep breath, because this show is going to be historically important and future retrospectives and debates are going to talk about it. For good or evil (and I think good, in this case) this is a thing now. We either adapt to it or we get irrelevant. Rail against it all you like, cry out for censorship and regulation (if you're shallow and short-sighted) but here we are and that will not work. Adapt your mind, help adapt the minds of others around you, and perhaps we will regain the ability to interpret the veracity of the message entirely without reference to the messenger. Perhaps the utterly failed expert/authority culture will give way to a renaissance of actual critical thought. Wouldn't that be something different!

Maybe "A. I." will actually end up saving us, turning us on to the real, actual deep fake that is the present mainstream media reality. Maybe a humorous, forward-leaning embrace of deep faking is the only honest, humanist, reality-embracing tactic that can trump so called "A. I.". I'm so down with this. I've seldom seen more honest performances from the so-called "faked" subjects of this program.