When Channel 4 announced The Experiment, it was met by a murmur of confused outrage. The premise – members of the public are invited into a progressive care home for disabled people, without being told its run under Nazi ideology – seemed to be ripped straight from the early-Noughties, when commissioners sought to shock first and answer their critics later. But are we really backsliding into mindless provocation? Or does The Experiment have something fresh and interesting to say about society’s callousness towards disabled people?
The concept is, in a way, simple. SegriLife is a spoof care facility, opening a new site in London. Members of the public have been invited to tour the premises and meet the disabled men and women who are being housed there. The twist, however, is that the conditions at SegriLife become increasingly dystopian. Residents are forced to wear uniforms and make cheap jewellery for the mass market, they’re confined to dorm rooms that look like military barracks, and they’re pushed in the direction of sterilisation and euthanasia. All of this has been taken straight from the playbook of 1930s Germany. “We can make this look really realistic,” says one of the show’s presenters, Mat Fraser, as they build this elaborate mousetrap.
