Word: caste
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...film them as they struggle to survive. You say it's already been done - there's I'm a Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here! and Survivor and, here in Britain, Castaway. But here's the twist: our participants will be ... disabled! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Cast Offs, a uniquely challenging reality TV show...
...half right. Unlike the schoolboy protagonists of William Golding's dystopian novel, Tom and the rest of the castoffs won't actually end up committing murder, but few other taboos will be left standing by the conclusion of the series. And, just like Lord of the Flies, Cast Offs is fictional. The show, scheduled to begin airing on Britain's Channel 4 on Nov. 24, is a mockumentary-style drama that apes the reality format it satirizes and seethes with sex, profanity and gloriously politically incorrect dialogue. But it stars actors who in real life share the same disabilities...
...twisted brainchild of producer Joel Wilson, whose previous oeuvres include the 2003 British TV show spoof Osama and U.S., in which Wilson and his regular collaborator Jamie Campbell try to solve their financial problems by finding Osama bin Laden and claiming the reward. Wilson originally envisaged Cast Offs "as something broadly satirical that would poke fun at the way disability is generally viewed ... We wanted to show the disabled were no more and no less f___ed up than anyone else." When writer Jack Thorne came on board - he's the creative talent behind the edgy, teen-drama series Skins...
...early 20s Thorne developed chronic cholinergic urticaria, a condition that makes him allergic even to the heat generated by his own body. "When I became disabled, I didn't become a better person. I just became a different person," he says. He shares with the disabled cast a desire to get away from the archetypes of disability that populate film and television. The castoffs aren't noble minds trapped in unusual bodies. Indeed, they soon reveal their true colors by endlessly complaining, shirking responsibility and squabbling with one another...
...diverse as The Office and Strictly Come Dancing have made comfortable transitions across the Atlantic, and reality TV show formats have found multiple berths abroad. If viewers succumb to the charms of six disabled characters behaving badly, the rest of the world may soon be scrambling to recondition Cast Offs...