Review – Series 7

This has got to be the ultimate send-up of “reality” TV shows: a program where contestants actually kill each other. The strongest point here is that the film-makers keep an almost perfectly straight face throughout. Everything from the titles and overlays right down to the competitors themselves could easily have come directly from Survivor, Cops or The Real World (except the characters are somewhat more compelling than their “real world” counterparts). Throw in the blunt, sometimes brutal violence (facilitated in the plot by some sort of nation-wide mandatory lottery), and you’ve got some only-slightly-ham-handed criticism of the depths of the depravity we’re willing to watch. The only slight slip is the excessive attention paid to the somewhat implausible past romance between two of the would-be assassins. Mildly amusing