Big Brother

Channel 4

The Big Brother housemates almost rebelled as one last week, and staged a walkout. If they had, a formidable consensus would have applauded: the papers, Big Brother's legions of critics, all those people making a big deal out of not watching it this year (this said, with a “it's-so-over” rolling of the eyes). Channel 4 is committed to showing another series after this. Bets are being taken on whether the station will pull the plug on it. The received wisdom is that the magic has gone. It has just been revealed that Sree Dasari, a contestant from this year's intake, was admitted to hospital after slashing his wrists. The show will get the blame, as it is blamed for everything.

Arguably, however, sorry, this season is one of the best ever. Isaac, siren Noirin's ex, has just turned up and started rowing (he's a reality veteran from Oz so knows how to stoke our shallow interest). Shaven-headed Lisa sits at the BB bus-stop plotting with her cohorts. Charlie and Rodrigo torment each other (we hope as a prelude to romance). And Noirin bewitches all in her path. Stories move slowly, the tasks are silly, the paranoia constant. It is compelling.

The story of Marcus and Noirin, or Wolverine and Noirin, is every toxic relationship; the story of the guy who, after not getting the girl, next makes her life hell. It's odd that Noirin has somehow been cast as the baddie in all this. Marcus's behaviour has been sinister and threatening ever since she made it clear that she didn't want a relationship. Noirin may send off the odd contradictory signal but her baseline message is clear: not interested. Marcus chose to misread that and play the victim. He should be voted out tonight, although next to Isaac he suddenly seems quite nice.

Big Brother 10 has been a maelstrom of emotional mis-engagement: from the questionable romance between sweet lad Kris and kind, blonde Sophie, to Noirin's many love quadrangles. That may not bear out the headlines of dwindling viewing figures (at around two million they're not at all unrespectable), it may not match the consensus that the show is in the TV knackers' yard, but Big Brother has more than proved its worth this year. The issue of its duty of care towards its contestants is thorny, admittedly. But one supposes that viewers only ever see a fraction of the diary room visits, not to mention the on-hand shrink. It's convenient to infer so, because Big Brother is television-land's supreme defiler of innocence, but is it really solely to blame for Dasari's slashed wrists?

It's astonishing to read how debased and debasing Big Brother is when, season after season the progress of the drama accords to a rigorous moral compass. The nasty and brutish are ejected, the good are rewarded, the colourful and strange entertain us. You may find it boring and dull - fine, switch over - but it's hardly the end of civilisation.

One of Big Brother's critics last week said that the show had begun as an interesting piece of social observation and had now descended into a circus of celebrity-hungry wannabes. As if any ambitious person appearing on television didn't want the same. Big Brother didn't start as an intellectual experiment, much as we may like to think of it as such: it took off when Nasty Nick schemed, plotted and got found out for trying to dispatch his competitors. It began as a soap, distinguished by a pantomime villain. All those people who said they were watching it like Margaret Mead on their sofas, notebook in hand, were really watching it (own up!) to nose on people; to watch conflict and romance. It was that first group of contestants that chanted, “It's only a game show!” They knew the score. Big Brother is an annual self-contained morality tale, cacophonous yes, but a unique thoroughbred. Run free, strange beast.

Psychoville

BBC Two

Psychoville also has a Marmite effect on viewers: the story of a group of grotesques bought together by menacing notes, it reached an ingenious conclusion last night. Mr Jolly the clown was revealed as the puppeteer, Eileen Atkins was the sadistic matron of the asylum where all the characters were once resident (and where the wannabe serial killer David first struck - Atkins's nurse his victim, after a vicious series of electric shocks). Each character, every line, was cannily, cleverly drawn, toilet humour dovetailing with jolting pathos - and there's nothing like an explosion for a cliffhanger.

How the Other Half Live

Channel 4

How the Other Half Live was arguably more exploitative than Big Brother, folding elements of Wife Swap and The Secret Millionaire into a queasy mess. A rich white family, the Brotherstons, who lived in the country, paid for a poor black family who lived in the city, the Gumpos, to improve their lives. There was nothing suspect either in the giving or receiving, and there was a happy, positive end result. But it was so forced that it left a troubling whiff rather than a warm glow. In this makeover, the end didn't justify the means.

tim.teeman@thetimes.co.uk

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