Harry's Blog

Have you noticed something very wrong with many of Channel Four's output over the last few years?

My beef is in the way many of its home-grown reality shows are edited.

Channel Four seems to think we all suffer from ADD or that we couldn't possible join Supernanny or Location Location Location and understand what is going on - even though every episode is pretty much the same.

Each show begins with what is essentially a trailer for the show you're about to watch. You would thing that given we've sat through the credits we know what we're going to get anyway.

If we're lucky we then get ten minutes of the show. But before the break we then get a trailer for the next part of the programme. Now it's time to sit through some commercials for overpriced moisturisers, price comparison websites and other tat.

Back from the break we get a recap of the last ten minutes of the show followed by a trailer for what is going to happen in the next ten minutes. And then, if we're lucky, there's just room to squeeze in some of the actual programme.

That is until it's time for the next break. Where, you guessed it, we get another trail for the next part of the show. After the break there's another recap of the show, another trail and if time allows some more of the programme.

Once we approach the end of the show there's a trailer for next week followed by an advert for the show's episode sidekick on More4. This programme is where you can see all the content that should have been on the show you were just watching, but there wasn't time, because we were too busy being recapped and trailed.

Why? Please tell me why programmes are edited like this. It's just a constant stream of "this happened" and "this will happen" with very little room to actually watch the programme itself.

Channel Four shows are beginning to approach the version of events you'd get if you missed them and just asked a friend to tell you what happened. I know in this multichannel world broadcasters are trying to grab viewers at every opportunity, even if they joined halfway through.

But honesty Channel Four, we really can work it out for ourselves. We're only watching Relocation because we think Kirsty is a doity wench anyway, we can guess the rest.

These shows are simple. Relocation will always feature an annoying couple with more money than sense want two houses when one will do and will spend an hour turning down places we'd dream of living in because they don't quite like the wainscotting. Or on Supernanny some kids behave badly and it's always the parent's fault - the mother because she has the moral strength of a lettuce, the father because he's just a useless wretch. We don't need ten minutes of the show to be recaps.

These are just two examples. But all of Channel Four's reality output is put together this way. By idiots.