The Year of the Sex Olympics

I first saw this in the early 70's, it was considered then to be nothing more than science fiction. Intended to be a glimpse of a world where anything goes in the name of entertainment, as well as a warning. It was meant to be an extreme satirical extrapolation, alluding to a future time, in the hope that it might not happen. Spooky really!!

This theme has been done to death many times since, but it was still fresh and original back then. I also remember a TV programme around about the same time called 'The Machine Stops', based on a short story by E M Forster. Although somewhat dated and naive now, bear in mind that it was written in 1909. Its main theme is that humans eventually become alienated and remote from their surroundings, preferring to communicate via TV screens, referred to as Cinematophote. This happened, in the fictional world, because the Earth was contaminated and the inhabitants had to go underground. Obviously the Internet, TV or email was not known then, but it predicted all three, it is strange how fact has 'triumphed' over fiction.

We haven't got to the next stage yet, whereby humans are entirely isolated from their surroundings, but who can say what the future portends?

On a future overly-crowded Earth, the masses are distracted by televised sex and entertained by ridiculous plot-less programming but, when then the 'media elites' discover that their flaccid viewers are more entertained when watching pain, they debut a cruel new show where forgotten emotions such as "fear and anger, worry and pain and ... grief" are put on display. Written by Nigel Kneale, who had penned a screen treatment of Orwell's '1984' for the BBC (there are similarities between the stories, notably in keeping the masses content and in the simplification of language) and the well-received 'Quatermass' sci-fi series in the 1950s, the film is often lauded for predicting the rise of 'reality TV' in the 2000s. This may be the first film to touch on the premise of people's 'real' lives (suffering or otherwise) being used for entertainment although the concept has been around in sci-fi books for some time. The budget BBC production is entertaining in a retro way, notably the future fashions which extend the 'paisley and flower-power' look of the 60s to the extreme. The truncated language takes some getting used to and the sound and images on the B/W survivor I watched on-line is a bit rough (the BBC, in their lack of wisdom, wiped the original colour prints), but otherwise this is a fascinating throw-back and Kneale deserves acknowledgement for making some of the more fulfilled predications in TV sci-fi (but the media was as ripe for this kind of satire then as it is now). Too bad we got crappy TV instead of flying cars.

Time : the near future. Or far. Or now.

A small minority of "high drive" people manufacture the entertainment and drugs that keep the majority of "low drive" people happy. TV is two way - they can see the audience reacting. And the news is bad - the Low Drives are getting bored, even with the "S=x Olympics" on the horizon.

Not all the High Drives are happy either. Some want "real art" on TV, others just have consciences. One "real art" advocate cracks, puts on an unscheduled demonstration during a TV show and is killed in a fall.

The audience laps it up, even as it laughs it up. The High Drives realize that the Low Drives want surprise, tragedy, even horror. They devise the "Live Life Show", with a High Drive family stranded on a windswept Scottish island, and lots of cameras around to follow their movements....and there's a surprise...your friendly neighborhood psychopath.

Britain's top actors, including the incomparable Leonard Rossiter, showed the way to where we are now, with Reality TV and Fear Factor lining the sewer of the public mind. At least they haven't killed anybody...yet.

That's how Nancy Banks Smith - the greatest TV reviewer ever - described this play.

I saw this play as part of a BBC archive trial. It is funny to hear one producer suggest a new idea for a programme: "I know let's put some people on a deserted island and just watch them." 32 years before Survivor or Big Brother. Of course, Nigel Kneale probably got paid £1000. John De Mol milked about Euro 1bn from the actual show.

Not all the predictions are true - the general public are shown to be lifeless drones who just watch TV all day and aside from Liverpool this has not come true.

Also, the viewer satisfaction ratings at the time were low and I think if I had seen the play in 1968 I would not have liked it as much. We like it now because of its predictive quality rather than for its artistic merits.

Finally, Banks Smith said you had to see the play in colour and only a B&W print exists.

BTW, there have been deaths from reality shows - suicide of an evictee on the first reality show - Family Robinson, the forerunner of Survivor. Suicide of an evictee on a US boxing TV show.

I hope that Nigel Kneale is receiving royalties from Endemol, producers of "Big Brother". Incidentally a death has occurred on a reality TV show. A contestant was killed during the making of "Noel Edmond's House Party". Plus there have been many deaths caused by the conflicts created on the "Jerry Springer Show". This is a must see film. It's a pity that the lessons of it were not headed. Leonard Rossieter went on to do "The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin" that also challenged the idea of the rat race. Nigel Kneale worked on the wonderful 1984 BBC adaption of 1984 and Quatemass. It is a shame that thought provoking science fiction like this is not being made, due to the dumbing down of television that Kneale predicted in this play.