Graham Norton<\/a>, its saving grace \u2013 is the latest to throw its cap into the ring. Six families take up residence in a suburban close (the neighbourhood, you get it) and each is aiming to be the last one voted out and thus claim the uncustomarily large pot of \u00a3250,000. This at least suggests that someone in the TV commissioning offices is beginning to understand the concept of inflation and the truth that yer 50 or 100ks are no longer universally life-changing amounts of money but closer to being a month\u2019s rent or the price of a tank of petrol.<\/p>\nThe rules for surviving in the neighbourhood are spectacularly simple, almost as if the people in charge were exhausted before they began and\/or couldn\u2019t afford to hire new blood after allocating the entire budget to the prize fund. We may never know, or care.<\/p>\n
There are daily \u2013 say it with me now \u2013 challenges that earn the winners \u2026 immunity, that\u2019s right! From \u201cremoval\u201d in this case, as \u201ceviction\u201d was presumably deemed too harsh a term. For the first, a member of each family is strapped on to a 7ft washing line and has to grab an item off it and read a fact stitched therein about one of the other people they have just met and guess to whom it applies. This is pointless and dismal and everyone squeals and whoops. The second challenge involves them all searching for gnomes. This is slightly less dismal. Always be gnome-hunting is not bad advice for life.<\/p>\n
Beyond that, the families must make \u2026? Alliances, yes, while also assuring their relatives and viewers that they never forget that at the end of the day they are playing a game and although they are actually very kind people they are also very competitive and came here to win, their superpower is \u201cbeing underestimated\u201d and they intend to \u201csmash it\u201d because they came here to win.<\/p>\n
More of a threat? \u2026 The Bradons take on The Neighbourhood. Photograph: ITV and ITVX<\/p>\n
The inaugural set of households includes the Bradons from Essex (their big question \u2013 does being a five-strong team make them look like more of a threat?); Sunita and Tony Kandola and her son Samra (is Sunita\u2019s immediate sharing of samosas with her neighbours the sign of a dangerously sophisticated gameplan?); the Lozman-Sturrocks (including son Jordan, on whom more later); the Pescuds (who harbour a secret astrophysicist now working in Greggs, which occasions further hysterical threat assessment); the Scousa Haus (Liverpudlian twins Lyndsey and Louise and Lyndsey\u2019s girlfriend Rosie); and four puppies masquerading as students, known as the Uni Boys. They bounce around their house so happily they should be administered as national tonic.<\/p>\n
Emotive backstories are gradually revealed, of course. The Lozman-Sturrock family have grown close over stepdad Dave\u2019s recent health issues and the twins want the money to help their terminally ill mother tick things off her bucket list. And Jordan L-S was in the military, which left him with PTSD and he now does standup comedy to raise money for men\u2019s mental health charities. How much this is all meant to explain or excuse his indefatigable desire to sabotage every possible relationship with other competitors despite alliances, at least in the early stages, being the only way to survive, remains unclear by the end of the two episodes \u2013 of 11! \u2013 available for review. \u201cI\u2019m bored of playing happy families!\u201d he announces roughly 40 seconds after having been briefly civil to Rosie. \u201cIt\u2019s time to start stabbing people in the back.\u201d Is this a sign that he was a very good soldier or a very bad one? I\u2019m intrigued.<\/p>\n
By the rest of it, less so. Any sense of jeopardy is conspicuous by its absence. Norton lifts the energy when he\u2019s there but is only present for the welcome and removals-voting. The contestants are largely a charisma-free bunch, and the only one that isn\u2019t is evicted early, with a suggestion of underlying racism that everyone works very hard to ignore.<\/p>\n
Yes, a moratorium, I think, is in order. TV commissioners and whatever the proper name for formatters is, take some time out. Rest. Recharge. Put the university puppies on in the meantime, and don\u2019t rush back.<\/p>\n
The Neighbourhood aired on ITV1 and is on ITVX now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve had a good idea. Let\u2019s apply for a moratorium on new reality shows, at least until the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-409332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}