What is it?

A reality show where 10 contestants must endure five separate “alternative” lifestyles to prevent eviction by the “Alts” – the five denizens of the Mad, Mad House whose word is law.

What to say of you like it

A plunge into the depths of sub-culture that brings lifestyles, which are often scorned by the mainstream, into the public consciousness and promotes a greater understanding of individuality.

What to say if you didn’t like it

A bunch of weirdos, who couldn’t get a gig working as the Munsters’ ugly inbred cousins, express their juvenile angst at society in a series of utterly lame tasks.

What was good about it?

• The unintentional hilarity when Don the vampire was introduced and he emitted a low guttural hiss.

• Plump contestant Kelly (think an amoral Jade Goody), who admitted she was a virgin (although this was perhaps to deflect attention from her heinous job as a political activist for the Republican Party). Later she demonstrated a similar talent to George W Bush for

making up words after she realised she was the least popular contestant after the Bloodbath game and said: “Everything that has happened between high school and now has been obliviated.”

What was bad about it?

• The Executive Producer was called Kent Weed.

• Each of the lifestyles were diluted to the point of a gimmick.

• Rentaghost was scarier than Don the vampire.

• All the young people are slim and good looking (apart from Kelly).

• All the Alts talked utter rubbish. Eg: Don the vampire: “A vampire is touched by the darker side of nature”; Avocado the naturist while “saging” Kelly: “It just blows all the negative spirits out”; Tashia the voodoo priestess explains her room is “a sacred

place”, and during a voodoo ceremony: “The drums begin to tell me to talk to the spirits”; and Fiona the witch remarked that one contestant was “not contributing to the fuel of the fire that burns this house”.

• Witches spells are perhaps not what they once were, as to inflate her breasts Fiona had to get surgery like everybody else.

• The derivative nature of the tasks that owed more to The Crystal Maze than contemporary sub-cultures. Don’s game was called Bloodbath where the contestants had to dive into a pool of “blood” to retrieve clichéd vampire artefacts such as crucifixes and rubber bats, which each contestant would then deposit in the pot of the person they didn’t want to win. It’s A Knockout could have sued if they had used clown outfits.

• The eviction seemed engineered to force God-fearing Brent, who won immunity in Bloodbath, to cast the deciding vote of whom to evict after his two best friends in the house received two nominations each from the Alts.