Now that one reality TV show has finished, you would have thought that Channel 4 would want to put together some thought-provoking and intelligent television. Throughout Big Brother's endless run, everything broadcast on E4 and C4 was non-stop squeals over the colour pink and arguments over cleaning.
Was Big Brother brain-taxing TV? Definitely not. So what could replace it? What about a hard-hitting documentary on high-level corruption, a special report on gun violence and the rise of stabbing incidents across the country or even a decent film for folk like us who are to lazy to rent them? Of course not, it's more reality TV-based frolics! Instead of trapping people together in a house for months, they’ll do it on a landfill site near London for three weeks. And that's Dumped. It does sound like the idea came from the mind of a mentally challenged teenager, but believe it or not, the next three weeks eleven absolute fucking morons volunteers will live off what we throw away.
Big Brother was all about cutting off people’s freedom and seeing how they cope when placed in controlled conditions. Dumped’s point is apparently to educate the public in to showing how much we waste. All to tie in with the ultra-modern and chic trend of being green and trying to stop earth imploding. The first episode saw the group build a shelter out of the rubbish that we throw away. And believe us, it wasn’t exactly thrilling viewing. Taking some thick plastic and bits of anything else they could get their hands on, a basic shelter was constructed. How our hearts bled for the people forced to sleep on a hard wooden floor. Oh wait, they volunteered to do so. Tough bloody luck.
Most of the show was then dedicated to people boo-hooing over how they didn’t like the smell of decaying rubbish around them and living in the filth of every wasteful fucker in the UK. We don’t have any plans to visit a landfill tip at any point soon, but we can imagine that isn’t that nicest place in the world to be. It’ll probably be full of maggots, flies, deadly gases and seagulls. Though if you’re lucky, you might find a fiver that some bone idle git left in his pants before throwing them away and not giving them to Oxfam.
We really are confused as to how anyone going on Dumped could expect a pleasant experience from this show, It almost seems like a forceful experiment in some respects. Over the three weeks, we will more than likely see how living off the land will be a bit shit when certain things happen. Like when the heavens open and people in the group have arguments over the last mould-filled eclair. Unlike Big Brother, there will be no characters to emerge and for us to fall in love with. Yes, Dumped is spun as an experiment, but the way it’s narrated and edited makes it more like a documentary.
Other things that emerged during the first episode of Dumped were that it was a little bit staged and fake. Were they living off a real dump? Not really, they had a fake dump made out to be a bit like what a real one would be like. It was placed pretty near a genuine landfill site but, nevertheless, it still qualifies as being fake. A major question that we wondered would be the issue of eating and drinking. Would they really be taking the last bite off our Big Mac and sipping our flat coke? Disappointingly no. Due to something called health and safety, they had all their grub provided for them. However, they would have to reuse as much as they could, but still it’s not the same as watching someone eat a two-week-old lasagne and contracting E-Coli.
A crucial blow was already dealt as one contestant named Darren walked after one day, his reasons being that he didn’t really like it and he felt like he was wasting his time there. Fair play to him, he realised that a holiday to Las Vegas was gonna be better. Forgetting he’d add to his carbon footprint flying there, he packed his bag and went home. For a serious show, Dumped did offer something to laugh at. One poor bloke had never heard of a landfill site before in his life and never questioned where his rubbish went. We’d love to hear what he did think happened to his stuff when it got taken away. Maybe it was a magic rubbish fairy that made it vanish in to thin air!
Sadly Dumped is another show that promised a lot from its trailers but just seems to be a desperate attempt to cram another reality show in to already overcrowded market. Will it educate people on rubbish issues? We imagine a few will pay attention, but a three-week stint of the show is surely going to wear thin if they're going to show us 21 ways how we can reuse a plastic bottle.
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Adam Gade says
Before I fully read this article and just saw the picture, I thought there was going to be a theme to the show that includes breaking up relationships or “getting dumped”. Oh well. But that chick in the pic is a volunteer?
Geez, she’s as dumb as she is hot.