Gogglebox Australia

If your an avid YouTube user, chances are you'll know what reaction videos are and how pointless and boring They are. This show is pretty much YouTube reaction videos on TV. People watch a trending show of some kind and comment on things that happen. These people try to be funny but make you groan instead since most of the show's humour is "Lol, they swore. That's pretty funny." This isn't entertainment, id rather watch these shows myself rather then having random people i don't care for talk over them.

I have to confess I find Googlebox UK is a guilty pleasure. I didn't expect the Australian version to be at all relevant and therefore wouldn't be all that entertaining, but I was wrong. I found it to be sort of educational. I've never been to Australia. I assume life is an odd cross between the UK and somewhere with warm weather. Never thought about TV habits, the residents of Ramsey Street didn't seem to watch any. 4 on demand have this available to stream. Series 1 dates back to 2015 which was fine, the first program they watched was My Kitchen Rules, which I binged watched a couple of years ago, it helped that I'd seen it even though it's an Australian program otherwise they may have lost my attention. It was a mixture of mostly Australian, British and American programmes. They reviewed the Australian version of "I'm a Celebrity" - this was surreal, 2015 it seems was the first time Australia had run the Australian version, was odd as the UK has had it for much longer and it was filmed in Australia. What was stranger still theirs was filmed in South Africa in a set and with critters that were the same as Australia??? Just like the UK version the households were equally as baffled as to the celebrity status of all of the contestants. The Australian version does not have as many household, but this version includes the children and therefore some discussion over the suitability of some programmes. So far interesting.

My wife and I were not going to bother with this pointless drivel from the awful promos alone ("Oh that poor cow!" is still tumbling around in my head making me want to tear my hair out) - as the incredibly inane idea of watching people watch television is a bit too pointless for words. It turned out to be far more unbearable than we had imagined and we certainly will not put ourselves through it again.

Apparently there are actually people who like to waste precious time out of their own lives by watching other people that they don't even know watch television and make juvenile comments like a class clown in the back row. It takes all kinds I guess, but this is produced in a way where it never even seems to begin by the time it is over and seems to be made for people with an attention span of about five seconds (which, in this day and age, is not that far off). There is no continuity of any kind or rhyme or reason to anything in this tortuous mess.

One male attempts to hum the theme song to a show he is watching.

People imitate the voice of the people they are watching.

One woman gets up and stands around for a few minutes (her head not even framed in the scene with just her torso showing) saying "I have to pee!"

No...I am not making any of this up. Really.

Someone once told me that you can't underestimate the intelligence of the general public and this is most certainly true. (Notice I said "can't underestimate" - in other words, many people would probably watch a show about bread burning or algae growing as long as there was music and odd pointless incongruous comments in the background.) When it comes to pure sensory deprivation, dunce-hood, and depersonalization, this is probably the "best" show for it. Good luck with your time on planet Earth. Something like this just about kills it and is actually depressing when you consider how many people really spend their time in such pursuits.

That title is not a joke, this is genuinely my favourite show on TV right now. It's genuinely funny, the families are a blast to watch (with Adam and Symon being my favourites). Is it brain dead? Absolutely. But sometimes it's nice to just sit down with my own family and laugh at the reactions.

For about a month Australian audiences were subjected to advertising telling us that the concept behind Gogglebox might sound stupid but the show is actually good. My wife and I decided, heck, lets give the show a try. Big mistake. Exactly how bad was it? Well, imagine the very worst reality show you ever watched and try to figure out how to make it even worse, and you have Gogglebox. What is worse than a reality show about dumb, irritating people? How about being trapped in a room with a bunch of boring people watching a reality show about dumb, irritating people. Now make it even worse. Make a reality show about boring people watching disjointed edits of a really bad reality show about dumb, irritating people so you can simulate being stuck in a room with those people whilst suffering short-term memory loss and dementia-style confusion.

Here is the basic concept of the program: Take clips from another TV show, deprive those clips of any context or continuity so they are just a disjointed mess, cut to miscellaneous people apparently picked out of a hat (or at least not on the basis of their wit), and show us their reactions. Cut to cooking show. The rich bitch makes a face. Cut to audience at home who note she made a face. Cut to host of cooking show talking about a miscellaneous dish. Cut to audience members talking about how they think he has a nice voice. Cut to guy with obvious southern US accent. Cut to dumb boring random person wondering if he's from Canada. Cut to other random person mentioning that the guy on the TV is a Texan. Flashback to 6 months of advertising for My Kitchen Rules about a Texan whose charm is making turkey noises. Cut to next random scene and inane comment from other boring person.

Do you think this review is long and rambling? Well, you have not experienced the sheer hell that is Gogglebox. Really, this, along with water-boarding, should be made illegal. It is torture. It is cruel and unusual punishment. It has zero benefit to intelligence. It strips us of our humanity. Yes, the show is that bad. I'd rather watch paint dry because frankly being bored to death is better than being subjected to this evil monstrosity of a show.

I can only conclude that the critical accolades they referred to in the commercials for this program (which, I reiterate, were built around the fact that it was a stupid concept) must have been for the British version of the show which I can only conclude has access to better clips and more interesting viewers. Or maybe they promised not to make the critics watch the show again. That would be more effective than threatening to shoot their dogs, rape their wives, and release embarrassing photos.

Apologies to the people who appeared on Gogglebox. You're probably nice people. I'm probably not interesting to watch whilst I'm watching TV. I'm not Mike Nelson either. But you are being used as instruments of torture.