Scared of the Dark is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Channel 4’s new reality series is Celebrity Big Brother without the lights on, featuring eight celebrities in a wholly unilluminated bunker – specially constructed within a hangar somewhere, I presume, on the road to hell. The captives undergoing seven dark days (for us all) include Chris Eubank – possibly England’s last genuine eccentric, replete with fur coat, winkle-picker boots and an unlit cigar the size of a baby’s leg – Love Islander Chloe Burrows, boxer Nicola Adams, the Wanted’s Max George, actor Donna Preston, blind standup comedian Chris McCausland, Gogglebox’s Scarlett Moffatt and footballing legend Paul Gascoigne.
They will – and it’s not my fault that there is no interesting way to put this – spend a week in total darkness, performing challenges to earn rewards, chatting to camera in The Vault (the chiaroscuro equivalent of the diary room), mainly about the lack of light, while living and sleeping together and trying not to bump into furniture. We watch them all in monochrome via infrared cameras. It is as boring to look at as it is to listen to. Everyone is either banging their shins and saying, “Fuuuuuck!”, or being performatively or unperformatively scared of the dark and screaming, “Fuuuuuuuuuck!” – or both.
