Big Brother is watching Big Brother.
Australian lawmakers have been tuning into a risqué late night edition of hit reality TV show Big Brother — and they don’t like what they’re seeing.
Communications Minister Helen Coonan has ordered the country’s television standards watchdog to take a look at Network Ten’s fly-on-the wall series to see if it breaches a voluntary code of conduct that covers what networks can and can’t air.
The show features a group of contestants who are sealed off in a house where their every move and comments are caught on cameras and microphones dotted around their temporary home. An edited version of the day’s events is broadcast every night and each week viewers vote to evict one of the ”housemates”.
The last surviving contestant wins a cash prize that currently stands at AU$750 000 ($585 000).
The probe came after heated debate broke out this week over scenes of full-frontal nudity aired in a weekly late-night spin-off called ”Big Brother Uncut.”
In one scene, viewers saw a male contestant with his genitals exposed massaging a woman.
The uncut show, which is preceded by a raft of warnings and advertised as adults-only viewing, also features regular use of profanities and has shown contestants naked in the shower.
”It’s mind-boggling banality,” government lawmaker Paul Neville said on Wednesday. ”I think it lowers the standard of Australian television.”
Network Ten advertises the show, which airs at 9.40pm, as: ”The naughtiest, skimpiest, downright dirtiest bits of Big Brother that we can’t show you any earlier. See what your favourite housemates are REALLY up to in the Big Brother House.”
Lawmaker Peter Lindsay, for one, does not want to see it all.
”Now we’re not prudes, but this is something that needs a bit of community leadership,” he said this week. ”Channel Ten is just trying to titillate.”
Big Brother is in its fifth season in Australia, airing every night of the week, and is a regular ratings winner for Network Ten.
A spokesperson for Network Ten did not immediately return a call seeking comment. – Sapa-AP