The untrue man show

By REBECCA BARRY

Imagine you're Sam Chambers. You're 27, a vineyard worker living on your grandfather's farm in Hawkes Bay, and you're about to take part in a TV show called Living the Dream.

For the next two weeks you'll be sharing a luxurious waterfront apartment with nine other contestants, competing for $50,000 while you live out your bizarre existence under the constant eye of the cameras.

Your mates back home reckon it will be a hoot. And, hey, you know what to expect - you've seen Big Brother, Treasure Island and Survivor.

But what you haven't been told about this "reality" show is that you're the butt of the joke. Your fellow "contestants" are actors, the scenarios are scripted and the whole thing is a hoax. A hilarious version of Candid Camera meets The Truman Show? Or a cruel and humiliating deception?

Host and actor Mark Ferguson, (who also fronted the first series of Big Brother and reality show The Mole), says the ethical implications were seriously discussed. There were concerns Chambers might form inappropriate bonds or become too close to some of his new flatmates.

"We definitely did worry," he says. "Maybe people are going to think this is unfair. But what we all felt is that as soon as somebody agrees to be on a reality TV show they agree to have cameras in their face for 24 hours a day for as long as they're on that show ... He didn't sleep with one transexual on this show, I can guarantee that."

Ferguson explains the comedy and drama stems not only from how Chambers reacts to what's going on around him but how the actors react to him. The joke is not just on Chambers but on reality TV itself.

Casting, therefore, was paramount. For secrecy reasons, the actors could not be told what they were auditioning for until they had been signed up, so there was an immediate risk they would refuse to participate once they found out. Pillaging from the Shortland Street cast would not work either.

So unfamiliar actors had to be found - those with the skill and stamina to stay in character 24 hours a day for two excruciating weeks.

They found them in Sarah Thomson as the rich bitch Tiffany, Stephen Hall as the former SAS soldier Mule, Jason Fitch as Mick the prick, Victoria Blackman as Mary the virgin, Awanui Simich-Pene as Rima the schemer, Jeremy Birchall as Billy the gay guy, Charlie McDermott as best mate Ben, and Kirsty Cooke as new-age counsellor Betty.

Ferguson recalls asking Blackman, a "wonderful" talent, how long she had been an actor.

Her reply: "Since Tuesday."

The other risks were just as complicated - competitions had to be rigged, storylines rejigged. And all of it had to happen without Chambers twigging.

"We'd be sitting there going, 'Oh my god, they've already started that particular story', and suddenly fingers would be flying over keyboards.

"Then, of course, there were relationships being formed that we had no control over. We would think that Sam would form an alliance with one person but of course he would form one with somebody else, which would change again everything.

"There was one instance where it was very important that somebody else won a particular challenge and the way it turned out was that Sam won, which potentially could have really screwed up the whole game.

"He is a very smart guy. We learned that in the opening episode, where he started asking questions about hoof-prints on the red carpet which was relating to a certain horse that was used in rehearsals and nobody else saw them except him.

Suddenly it was like, 'Oh my god, he is unbelievably observant and smart and we are in deep shit. He's going to be on to us in the first episode'."


The reason he didn't, says Ferguson, is because the reality genre is now so entrenched in our minds that we accept its outrageous nature. Take the archetypal characters with rhyming names, for instance.

In an ordinary situation, the extreme personalities would have been ludicrous - on TV it's what we expect.

"The interesting thing is how quickly genuine contestants in reality shows work out what's required of them and that's what they play," he says.

"Sam worked out really quickly he was the nice guy, the under-the-radar guy. Normally that guy doesn't get voted off. But he must have wondered why, after the first couple of episodes, all the storylines started to aim at him."

And storylines they are. At one point, Ferguson goes from playing the smarmy host to becoming a contestant, "being associated with one or two of them in a not particularly honourable way.

"When you start doing that, you start thinking, 'How is he ever going to buy this?' It gets deeper and deeper and deeper until it's absolute chaos and quite hysterical.

"We go further and further and further into an outrageous reality and at every stage we take a huge deep breath and go, 'Oh my god, we're about to do this. This is insane'.

It's the most ulcer-inducing show I've ever been involved in."

The star: Mark Ferguson

The show: Living the Dream

The time: Tuesday 8.30pm

The place: TV2