It is 9.15pm and Louis Walsh and Sharon Osbourne – formerly of The X Factor fame – are standing in a colourful makeshift house on the outskirts of west London. “What are we doing?” whispers Louis as he grips Sharon’s shoulders, who has the frozen, bewildered look of someone who agreed to briefly appear on TV again for a princely sum without fully thinking it through. And then, the two of them are ushered into a hideaway in another section of the Celebrity Big Brother house, where they secretly watch people such as Love Island’s Ekin-Su and the Princess of Wales’ uncle clink champagne glasses and make small talk around a sofa.
It is a strange start to an undoubtedly strange show – not least because it’s 2024. This is the era of carefully managed TikTok accounts, of Notes app apologies and glossy scripted “reality” television and Instagram accounts awash with branded content for jade rollers and vitamin gummies. We’re not used to seeing celebs – and I use that word fairly loosely here – talk in their natural intonation, with all the awkward silent gaps and self-conscious expressions that can come from any candid real-life interaction. At one point, the camera cuts to Louis and Sharon again. “I just like nice simple food,” says Louis, shrugging. “I can make tea and I like takeaways.” Sharon nods stiffly. “I can do baked potatoes,” she says.
In many ways, it’s this oddness that made Celebrity Big Brother so fun to begin with. In the 2000s and early 2010s, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more ridiculous and engaging show on TV – and that’s no exaggeration. This was the show that gave us Pete Burns furiously sucking on a cig after his monkey fur coat got taken into custody; Austin Powers’ Verne Troyer getting wasted and purposely crashing into the diary room door in his mobility scooter; “David’s Dead”, a moment in which Tiffany Pollard mistakenly believed that David Gest had dropped dead of cancer in the diary room after a comedy of errors involving Angie Bowie announcing the death of her ex-husband. And let’s not forgot – or maybe we should try to – the MP George Galloway getting on all fours and pretending to lap milk from the outstretched hands of Rula Lenska.
That said, although there are flashes of camp absurdity in ITV’s revival of the classic reality show (Osbourne saying “she’s dressed like Cats” as one of the Real Housewives of Cheshire click-clacks into the house in a sparkly bodysuit), and though it is still early days, there is something about the launch that lacks the raucous magic of its predecessor. AJ Odudu and Will Best are valiant hosts who keep the energy up to 100, but this isn’t watercooler telly in the way it once was. Presumably not everyone in Britain is watching (in its heyday, a CBB launch could draw 7 million viewers). And, as a result, there isn’t that same almost manic atmosphere that can come from celebs desperate for their second shot of golden juice, while a braying crowd barely contains their excitement (this crowd, wrapped in padded jackets and scarves and cheering good-naturedly, looks more like families at fireworks night).
The lineup is also fairly moderate. The lack of big names isn’t the issue – CBB has previously thrived off all manner of C-listers. But the lack of variety is palpable. A large portion of the housemates are young faces from other reality shows – Love Island, Strictly Come Dancing, Ibiza Weekender – or British soaps. Back in the day, CBB was a real mixing pot. There would usually be a couple of big American names – Dennis Rodman, La Toya Jackson – paired with Bez or Vanessa Feltz, with someone completely random such as Preston from the Ordinary Boys thrown into the mix. The joy came from watching someone such as Tara Reid interact with Jedward; all ages and category of celebrity willing to put aside pride for a nice thick wad of cash.
It’s too early to say whether ITV’s Celebrity Big Brother will be a hit, although it does have promise. And it’s definitely fun to see a slightly less careful, less formulaic TV offering that harks back to a pre-streaming era. But to truly enjoy this, I think, it’s worth forgetting the original version entirely. We can’t time-travel to the 2000s, to a more anarchic time when celebs would smoke and drink with abandon and scream at their housemates over instant coffee without considering the consequences. And maybe that’s for the best – this a more watchful, less unfiltered, but also arguably less cruel decade.
Big Brother is on ITV 1 and ITVX
