In Plato’s allegory of the cave, a group of people find themselves bound to the walls of a subterranean hangout. Ahead of them they see flickering shadows, caused by the distant fires of the sunlit world, but all else, for them, is darkness. Are these shadows reality, or just a pale facsimile? That was the question of two millennia ago: now it’s Channel 4’s turn to use darkness as an allegory for reality (or reality TV), with Scared in the Dark, a new five-part celebrity reality show told, not by Plato, but by Danny Dyer.
Scared of the Dark follows a group of eight celebrities – boxers Chris Eubank and Nicola Adams, singer Max George, Love Islander Chloe Burrows, ubiquitous TV person Scarlett Moffatt, actor Donna Preston, stand-up Chris McCausland and, well, Gazza – as they spend a week or so in the pitch black. “Located deep within a 146,000 sq ft hangar,” chummy host Danny Dyer observes with his trademark moon-eyed wonder, “this specially built living space is designed to shut out all light.” And it does. Immediately they are discombobulated, Eubanks swinging a walking stick like a divining rod, Burrows shrieking like she’s being tickled by Mr Blobby. Only McCausland – who is sight impaired – is relatively unconcerned by his surroundings.
