Production Summary
Come on Down and Out, produced by Stephen
Garrett as an ingenious one-off game show, was screened as part of Channel
4’s Gimme Shelter season. The show took three homeless people off
the street and made them compete with each other for a home in front of
a live studio audience - with no prizes for the losers! The show was actually
a carefully constructed hoax. The homeless people were actors, and, although
the actors and production crew were aware of the hoax, the live studio
audience and the viewers at home were not. The programme was critically
acclaimed, controversial and challenging but, above all, effective in
bringing attention to the issues surrounding homelessness. |
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“I
urge you to watch it. It seems to me a work of rare inspiration.”
The Independent
“Used
the game show format to devastating satirical effect...It retained
a shocking power and its grotesque presentation of the gulf between
the have’s and the have not’s will stay in my mind for
a long time...” Sunday Times
“I have never
been so angry watching television in my life... Only in the last round
did I realise we were in Jonathan Swift territory... Looking back
it was obviously a hoax. But it remained believable because its parody
of the casual cruelty in game shows was so exact.” Sunday Telegraph
“It
was outrageous, it was tacky, but it certainly made an impact.”
Daily Telegraph
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