How TV became my dystopian nightmare in 2022

TV in 2022 was most dystopian yet Rex Features
Tv in 2022 reached dizzying dystopian heights (Image: Rex)

This yr, tv usually made us really feel as if we had been dwelling in an episode of Black Mirror. There have been scenes on our screens that had been so surreal we had been left franticly asking ‘is that this actually occurring?’ and ‘how did we get right here?’ 

In some way, someplace, the road of style, decency, and morality was overstepped, not as soon as, however so ceaselessly that we’re left with no different choice than to worry we're heading in the direction of the unhealthy place. Or maybe, we’re already in it. 

For essentially the most half, the few months of the yr on tv gave the impression to be okay. We had been rising from the Covid pandemic and quietly having fun with Bez from the Comfortable Mondays being lowered down on an ice rink on a set of large maracas. Tv appeared normal-ish. 

However then swiftly Eamonn Holmes was calling for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to be ‘thrown over the balcony’ on GB Information and Richard Madeley’s Good Morning Britain interview with an activist appeared like a scene straight out of Adam McKay’s 2021 satire Don’t Look Up. 

Bez on Dancing On Ice
Bez delighted Dancing On Ice viewers along with his large maracas (Image: ITV)

Quick ahead to the summer time and this hellfire erupted, and it began with Adam Collard’s return to Love Island. 

Adam first arrived on our tv screens in 2018 and his foray into the villa was marred with controversy. On the time, he was accused of gaslighting and emotional abuse. 

However quick ahead 4 years, and he was invited again with open arms to crack on and discover love as soon as once more. It was a problematic transfer by casting producers and one so unhealthy that the charity Ladies’s Support was pressured to concern an announcement expressing concern. 

Adam Collard on I'm A Celebrity
Adam Collard returned to Love Island this summer time (Image: ITV)

Had everybody merely simply forgotten about Adam’s behaviour or did no one appear to care? 

Issues began to succeed in a fever pitch in September when Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield left the nation outraged with a particular model of their Spin to Win sport on This Morning, one month earlier than the queue-gate controversy no much less. 

Their revamped competitors gave callers the chance to get their vitality payments paid for, ditching its standard prizes of holidays overseas.   

The transfer couldn’t have been extra tone-deaf if it tried and viewers had been so shocked that the price of dwelling disaster was being made mild that they flocked to Ofcom of their a whole lot. For sure, it was quickly scrapped. 

However Holly and Phil’s patronising sport was simply one in all a number of unbelievable tv moments that left us with our heads in our fingers. Keep in mind how former Tory MP Edwina Currie dropped by Good Morning Britain to inform viewers they might lower your expenses on their vitality payments by placing foil behind their radiators? Sure, that basically occurred. No, it wasn’t a fever dream. 

Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield on This Morning
Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield’s Spin To Win prize needed to be seen to be believed (Image: ITV)

Fortunately, we did have some mild aid within the type of Joe Lycett that very same month when he joined Laura Kuenssberg on her BBC politics programme. 

Through the hour-long episode, he gloriously ruffled feathers by pretending to be a staunch supporter of 44-day Prime Minister Liz Truss. 

‘I believe the haters will say we’ve had 12 years of the Tories, and that we’re type of on the dregs of what they’ve bought accessible, and that Liz Truss is type of just like the backwash of the accessible MPs,’ he stated. 

‘I wouldn’t say that, as a result of I’m extremely proper wing, however some individuals would possibly say that.’ 

However the laughter wasn’t to final as a result of it wasn’t lengthy earlier than we had been smacked sq. within the head with the most important dose of dystopia but: Matt Hancock being supplied a redemption arc on a plate on I’m A Celeb… Get Me Out Of Right here! 

Matt Hancock on I'm A Celebrity
Matt Hancock was handed a redemption arc on a plate on I’m A Celeb (Image: ITV)

Hancock, as within the very former Well being Secretary who lest not overlook was answerable for placing hundreds of aged individuals again in care properties throughout the Covid pandemic, which noticed a whole lot of hundreds of individuals die. 

He was allowed to skip into the jungle as if the previous two years by no means occurred. 

However that’s not even the worst of it. Regardless of the preliminary rage that exploded after he was introduced as a latecomer, he somebody managed to claw his method into the ultimate. 

After just a few weeks within the jungle, Hancock one way or the other gained over the hearts of hundreds of thousands with many ready to forgive and overlook his actions of the previous. He exited the camp in third place, proving extra fashionable than Mike Tindall and bloody Sue Cleaver from Coronation Avenue. How on earth did we get right here?

Having watched tv with abject horror this yr, I solely worry that we’ve barely scratched the floor. 

May we anticipate to see Boris Johnson within the Large Brother home when the traditional actuality present returns to ITV? Effectively, it’s clear we will not rule it out. 

If that is the way forward for tv, then I would like out. 

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