Near the start of this hilarious and ambiently horrifying documentary, presenter Oobah Butler informs the viewer what exactly is riding on the success of his latest stunt. Emerging from a meeting at Channel 4’s headquarters, he floats a contract in front of the camera. In signing this, Butler claims, he is “guaranteeing that I am going to make a million pounds in 90 days”. If he succeeds, he’ll be a rich man. If he fails, “I suppose I won’t be working with Channel 4 again.”
If Butler is yet to make it on to your radar, those stakes may sound negligible – does it really matter whether this man ever makes another TV programme? To that I say: yes, it absolutely does. Over the past decade, Butler has established himself as one of the most enjoyably idiosyncratic prankster-satirists of the modern age. He gained global attention with a 2017 project for Vice magazine, in which he managed to get a completely fictional establishment – “The Shed at Dulwich” – listed as London’s top restaurant on TripAdvisor, questioning the effectiveness of the algorithm (when TripAdvisor became aware that it was a fake, they took it down).
