Me, you and the documentary crew

For­get the so-called real­ity TV of Big Brother 4, where you don’t even fig­ure in the plan unless you’re young, (rel­at­ively) good-looking and have no qualms about stick­ing your tongue down someone’s throat within minutes of meet­ing them.

I’ve just watched the first in the series of Mr & Mrs on BBC2, and far from fea­tur­ing a cheesy 1970s set and Derek Batey (ask your grand­par­ents), it proved to be the kind of on-screen real­ity mater­ial that leaves you the unpleas­ant feel­ing that you shouldn’t really be watch­ing. Too private, thanks very much — keep it between yourselves.

The series aims to look at the real­ity of mod­ern mar­riage by fol­low­ing four couples through a few dif­fi­cult months in their rela­tion­ship. As real­ity gets, it’s pretty damn close. How­ever, I have severe doubts whether the pro­grammes will really shed much light on mar­riage in the 21st cen­tury, simply because I can’t believe these people are com­pletely aver­age — after all, what aver­age mar­ried couple would allow a doc­u­ment­ary crew into their home to fol­low intim­ate con­ver­sa­tions, tiffs, blaz­ing argu­ments and dis­cus­sions about how often they have sex?

“Darling, we can sort out our prob­lems together. Just you, me and six mil­lion view­ers on a mid­week even­ing. Oh, and be care­ful when you go to the bath­room, because there’s a man with a boom mike stand­ing in the bidet.”

Yes, I’ll be fair — the situ­ation was handled with a degree of typ­ical BBC sens­it­iv­ity and a ser­i­ous voi­ceover that pos­it­ively oozed Brit­ish reti­cence and objectiv­ity. The aim was to make it abund­antly clear to doubters like me that this was Import­ant Fac­tual Pro­gram­ming, rather than simply tele­visual tit­il­la­tion. But in the end, Mr & Mrs is just another example of the Jerry Springer Syn­drome that is gradu­ally tak­ing over TV in the UK. Got a prob­lem? Don’t talk about it in private, don’t seek pro­fes­sional advice — no, put it on the telly instead! That’ll help!

Oh, and quite apart from the acute embar­rass­ment that I should think each couple involved in this series is going to face when they open their front door the next morn­ing, what about the kids? Or to phrase it in a more tabloid-friendly way, “Wot abaht ver kids, eh?”

Kibi and Mark, the couple in this first pro­gramme, have two young chil­dren. Some­time in the next few years, you can be abso­lutely cer­tain that those chil­dren are going to dis­cover the video of Mummy’s and Daddy’s TV show, and will sit there goggle-eyed as they view the moment when Mummy sug­ges­ted that Daddy wasn’t exactly a hot stud in bed, or the time when Daddy called Mummy a “fucker” under his breath.

Of course, it could be even worse. The chil­dren might be blighted with the curse of ‘open’ par­ents, who insist on play­ing the video to their off­spring — and their offspring’s many friends — as a treat on a Sat­urday after­noon. Try liv­ing that one down in the play­ground on Monday morning.

Des­pite the above cri­ti­cism, as I watched I did have one sly thought. How I wish that doc­u­ment­ar­ies such as these had been the latest TV craze in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. My par­ents would have been per­fect fly-on-the-wall spe­ci­mens, and would have provided almost end­less mater­ial for the rela­tion­ship coun­sel­lors in the live online chat after the broad­cast. Never mind one pro­gramme, they’d have secured their own series — although obvi­ously I would have had to change my name, dis­own my fam­ily, and go into hid­ing until I reached maturity.