Death Row Big Brother - Redux

It's the show that everyone is taking about.

All the glossy magazines constantly run splash features and the inside gossip, contestant profiles and sound-bite interviews with former lovers, mothers, brothers and victims.

You dare not miss it for fear of being ostracised from modern society. It's got a tighter grip on the national psyche than any child abduction/ murder hunt/ celebrity couple split ever has, and the TV executives milk that cash cow for every last drop of blood stained, government sanctioned, ultra violence they can get.

Not so much TV de jour as TV de vie.

Missed the latest broadcast from the 'house'?

You may as well run a hot bath, drink the largest bottle of black label vodka that your job in media sales will allow for, write a brief but concise note to whomever you erroneously believe gives a damn and run that razor blade down the vein in your left wrist and then down the vein in your right...

Seriously, the show is just that good.

It's the only topic they discuss on 'Radio Brain Damage' when you're blasted from your dreams of contestant number six by 'Electric Justice' the shows theme as performed by the boy band 'Alien:8'.

If you change channel in the shower to 'Thought for the Day', you can nod reflectively as Reverend Rory Rogers prattles on that this is heaven, hell and eternal damnation all in a single viewing with 'best of' highlights at 9PM tonight.

On the platform every front page screams;

"Agony, ecstasy and the last minutes
of Anton Kregger!"

Anton did well to get into the last six to be perfectly honest. With the stutter and nervous twitch he was never going to be the teenage girls wet knicker choice - the largest phone vote group demographic there is.

In the queue for the cabs the suits feverishly gesticulate as they imitate Antons demise, which we all viewed live the previous night.

Laughing like physically deranged hyenas on speed they twist and writhe, perfectly capturing his death throws at the end of the rope. Out of a sense of propriety however, they choose not to follow through with the bowel evacuation.

The cabbie witters on about the time Tom Johns was in the back of his cab and how he apparently left a bloody cleaver behind when he got out.

This is apocryphal of course, it's a well know and well documented fact that Tom's favourite item of kitchen ware/ recreational tool was the fillet knife made by Global, not some cheap horror prop picked up by the vest wearing public at M&S.

Even business meetings are interrupted by frantic speculation as to who will eventually be left and what kind of life the winner will ultimately face with their newfound notoriety.

All the popular (and well paid) pundits gleefully predict the lucky contestant will last approximately five minutes once they are out again in the real world.

"We'll see...", they say before finally starting their meeting which involves occasionally drawing a crude parallel between an issue at hand and the show. Purely to illustrate a point, of course.

God knows they'd all rather be watching the highlights from the past twenty-four hours than discussing anything that can give you a proven business improvement over twelve to eighteen months.

Life is just too short, especially for the contestants on DRBB.

Naturally the highbrow media and news shows stuffed full of self regarding culture commentators and rejects of the intelligentsia, discuss the morality of this new cutting edge format and smugly blame the decline of our society on Mark Canttrell and his production companies genius/ insanity in get DRBB to air in the first place.

The critics know they are complicit as they blow even more oxygen up this publicity machines arsehole, but the thing is, they need the ratings and the only game in town is DRBB. If they don't talk about it ratings plummet and if the ratings plummet they'll be pulled faster than a fourteen year olds cock on Day 42.

DAY 42?

Not that you can ever forget such great television, but Day 42 was the broadcast in which Jennifer Chadwell was released into the house.

It quickly became known as the weekly challenge that went grotesquely wrong.

Despite the evisceration and associated bloodlust the ratings again soared... so no one really lost out.

Except maybe Jennifer and Jennifers next of kin who were sent her remains in a shoebox.

The thing is this, Jen did sign that release form and she did get her fifteen minutes of fame. Although to be fair, she actually only lasted twelve minutes and seventeen seconds, but then again the time was apparently never stipulated as part of her contractual agreement. And besides which, who was counting when the first arm was severed and the blood gushed forth?

As stated earlier, in terms of a ratings boost it was a major success, eventually leading to the UK being expelled from the United Nations. So for a semi-retard hair stylist from Kent, Jennifer did rather well.

They even had to get the law changed to air it. But change it they did, and we thank them all the more for it.

Long forgotten are the days of television shows with 'real actors' and 'real plots'. If it can't be condescend down to a five word 'pitch', with an optional 'Celebrity' affix, when ratings dip, then we don't want it.

They say it's become the defining moment of a generation.

After all, everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when Canttrell and his production company ''Abortion Tickles', first revealed plans for his new high concept reality TV show;

DEATH ROW BIG BROTHER

The concept was beautiful. Take ten convicted murderers currently languishing on death row in prisons across the UK. Put them together in a single house with no guards, no supervision, little or no food, no access to the outside world and then lock the door.

Canttrell predicted that over the ten week period in which the show would air, every TV, radio, mobile phone and PC would be tuned in and watching as events in the house of hell unfolded before our eager eyes. Canttrell was far from being wrong.

The rules of the game were simple;

Ten men go in, only one man comes out.

Each week there is a public vote following the House Convicts (HC) nominations. The nominated HC is then executed live on national TV or grainy live link via the internet.

The HC's method of execution forms part of one of the many competitions run each week by DRBB's sister show;

DRBB: Victim's Revenge.

Last week we had William Batchelor being crucified live in the DRBB garden. This was the winning suggestion from Anna Batchelor aged 9 (no relation) from Whitely Bay, Tyne and Wear.

The finale is set to be an extra special Televisual treat. Simply put, the convict that gains the most public votes has his conviction quashed and can immediately go free. An added prize is that the winner is given carte blanche to kill the runner up in a style of his own choosing.

In the recent Channel 4 documentary;

Mark Canttrell: Execution of Entertainment.

Canttrell states that it was the murder-suicide of Helen Smith and Lee Critchlow during week 6 of Big Brother 17, that opened the floodgates for a whole new wave of ultra violent and ultra slick extreme reality TV Shows, which currently include alongside DRBB;

Wife Rape: Celebrity Special

Concentration Camp Revisited

and the BBC's very own;

Wheelchair: Fight Academy

During the documentary, Canttrell is asked by Elizabeth Hanson the thirteen year old presenter of ITV's flagship nightly news programme 'Hanson News';

"How can you justify exposing the public to such crass, pornographic, debasing and morally bankrupt progamming?"

Canttrell immediately replies;

"People watch it; that's all the justification I need."

Canttrells original goal to have a continuous live feed via all available media channels for the entirity of the seventy day run has so far only been interrupted briefly during day 53, when horrifically a seven year old boy managed to get into the house.

Within moments of the child's presence in the contestants sleeping quarters being discovered, the house was stormed by the production companies own private security team;

Who Dares Bleeds.

Tragically, they were unable to prevent Donald Masterson from claiming his fourteenth victim.

The feed being cut just seconds before Masterson made his cut.

The next morning Canttrell vigorously denied that the frenzied murder of Matthew Wheatly was a publicity stunt to gain further ratings.

He successfully argued that no one was currently watching anything else but DRBB, so what benefit could be had from the staging such a diabolical yet admittedly memorable stunt?

Later, that same day, Canttrells deputy head of production Morton Jaegar, was fired when it was revealed that Jaegar had 'forgotten' to block the web cam feed during the Day 53 incident.

Copies of the bootleg DVD;

Day 53: Masterson uncut!

have been the biggest selling item on eBay for the past 3 weeks.

Donald Masterson is still in the running to be the lucky released winner when the finale finally airs a week this Friday.

Masterson faces stiff competition from the Evesham Slasher - Glenn Jones (known affectionately in the press as Glenda J, due to Jones's predilection for dressing up in his victims clothes) and Marcus Holt, the music teacher bludgeoner from Shoreham on Sea. Holt is both the youngster member of the DRBB household and the contestant with the lowest IQ. 22 and 52 respectively.

As this first season of DRBB draws to a dramatic close we are forced to ask ourselves this question;

"How will we be able to fill the gaping void in our lives when the final contestant is released and the runner up is brutally murdered?"

Is there life after DRBB?

Well...you get to decide for Marcus, Glenda J or Donald if there will in fact be life for one of them after DRBB.

So get voting now, but remember...

DRBB: It's just a question of time.