Real people weren't being real enough

I was just watching Lost Revealed, and that remark, from John Harlow of The Sunday Times, struck me as something to bear in mind when reflecting on Big Brother. Lost was being compared to Survivor, and a woman was shown saying the characters in Lost had started to seem more real to her than the ones in the reality show. Then: "real people weren't being real enough."

That could be right. Big Brother housemates can be boring, repetitive, or one-dimensional in ways that fictional characters would never be allowed to be, and that real life doesn't seem to be either. Perhaps television filters out so much that only the hightened reality of fiction, and acting, can get through without too much loss.

Or perhaps we're just so used to fiction on tv - to the narrative speed and to the intensity and significance of each scene - that real life in real time seems stretched out and slow.

Somewhere in between we'd find the highlights shows constructed by editing the events of the day before. (Cue huge debate about the aims and effects of editing in Big Brother? Not yet.)