Judge John Deed tonight on BBC1 tried the interesting case of the reality show where a "fight night" ended in a death.

Any similarity with BB was of course coincidental - the HM were stressed and put into a situation where incompatible people were giving and taking orders and someone snapped. The show was cast with extreme, unstable people. The situation was set up to achieve ratings, violence was accepted as a possible outcome and the psychologist's advice was not followed. The producer was found guilty of manslaughter and the jury recommended action against the production company and broadcaster.

The HM of course were fictional and totally unlike any one, or any combination of any two HM, from BB3-5 or any other BB series. There was the African seeking a better life who could not stand gays or taking orders from females and who had a violent temper. Then we had the female character who insisted that he complete the task and who kept on ordering him to do it. The most interesting HM was The tall attractive gay character who liked provoking him and who was a secret BNP supporter - although he claimed to have only attended their rallies as his right wing father had told him to.

Good thing nothing like that happens on BB.

I didn't watch it but from your description it sounds as if they could have libelled Dan. Could be interesting.

I saw bits of it while flicking channels and when the Adam Ricketts character was in the dock...my first thoughts were "Arrrgh! BB5 fight night!"

Why Dan rather than Marco?

Err........"tall, attractive." Not Marco then.

But doesn't everything else fit Marco better than Dan?

I watched it. It was very good despite being a touch OTT in places.

It was fascinating - the parallel to BB5 was incredible. Good television viewing.
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The only other description of this character (apart from the BNP bit) is that he liked to provoke the 'Ahmed' character. My recollection is that Marco was picked on by Ahmed rather than Marco provoking him. It seemed to be Dan who was always getting digs in at Ahmed.

I thought it was a rather good mockup of fight night bar the fact that security were called in a lot later on this. Of course when Adam Rickett suddenly appeared as producer then all credibility was lost, I mean come on who are they trying to kid.

I'm not sure.

Is there a repeat, as I missed it last night?

If it was written by someone who follows BB - and there were some very interesting echoes - you have to allow for a bit of dramatic license and perhaps someone having fun merging characters. You also alter it a bit to make it clear you are not referring to an actual person. Hence the African was an evangelical christian not a moslem and young and tall which meant he didn't look like Ahmed either.

The gay character had a provocative role in the lead up to the fight and was tall which might make someone think Marco but no one had any reason in BB5 to think Marco was racist so he isn't the model. Dan doesn't fit at all - he played the opposite role in fight night. If you merge characters, the person you merge into the gay character may not be gay at all - you could even make them gay for your own reasons. There have been press articles (which would show up if you researched press cuttings) about racist attitudes among some BB HM on some series though and you wonder whether this idea was thrown into the character or whether the writer was actually even better informed and merged Marco's role in BB 5 fight night with someone else from BB history.

Was it a hodgepodge or someone who knows the show having fun dropping clues where he got bits of his characters from? There were rather a lot of echoes for HM designed totally at random - not all of them from BB5.

Which fictional character was the murder victim then?

yeh!..it's obvious that the drama's twained BB-characters...
so i'll do a bit of twaining myself..

the African is V***or....the female is M****lle...the tall attractive(?) gay is J**on....and M***o bites the dust..
who did it?... C*****dra

Another clue? The task which they were completing appeared to be cleaning the lavatory. With what looked possibly like a tooth brush...........

The african was scripted with an extreme version of ahmed's views from a different religious background but with more violence and physical power. its not J.... who had no views on anything much and wasn't really aggressive?

The girl telling him to get on with it had her top on but the echo of the classic BB5 scene seemed intentional.

That doesn't mean he wasn't a model for the character. Everything else matches fairly well.

This was a fantastic episode !

however I didn't really see the inmates as house mates. Stereo types yes so yes we can see resemblences , but I don't think the episodes characters were built upon real HM, just traits, traits that they were possibly picked for to start with.

What I found interesting was the episodes dealings with the producers etc. how much control & say they do have. To me it was obviously in the producers favour, even though they got sent down, as it passed the buck so to speak, not so much in law but in our minds.

Lesson, The GBP like Drama , like conflict, hate pain. So keep the conditions fluctuatingly harsh with frequent short rewards of pleasure.

I thought the fight night scenario was very inspired by BB5 and its reporting and the echoes of Ahmed v Michelle, Jason v Marco were a bit strong for a plot written without them in mind? The essential chemistry between Ahmed and Michelle was recreated as was the link between provocative behaviour and what followed. You even had dissenting advisers claiming they had advised against provoking a fight. I wouldn't be surprised if the interpretation of the gay character was based on an imitation of a couple of HM either - there were just too many little touches that fiited the stories of some HM from Bb and previous shows.

Not sure if the producers on the fictional show did that well - at one point it was claimed that the production team of the fictionall show were high on coke and unable to think coherently which isn't a great reference for the profession.

Judge Deed had a go at the pointlessness of the show and what it did to the public craving for celebrity - he didn't note that these were about the only celebs the public actually voted for.

Personally I find it more worrying that the guy who has been ruining The Bill by blowing up the cast every few years and murdering all the women officers has now moved to Endemol. Lord knows what he thinks would be a dramatic BB6.

If only he'd been there during BB5!