Channel 4's new 'social experiment' Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing handcuffs strangers together for 24 hours a day in a bid to heal a divided Britain. Instead, it emerges as nasty, crass and completely abysmal, according to early reviews.
Hosted by Jonathan Ross, the six-part series pairs individuals from different backgrounds, such as a plus-size fashion brand owner with a man who thinks fat people are lazy, and a former prison officer with an aristocrat who owns a painting by Adolf Hitler. The pairs compete for a £100,000 prize by lasting as long as possible while cuffed together, even in the shower.
Critics argue the show manipulates differences for views, resembling a cheap throwback to Wife Swap or The Jeremy Kyle Show. Ross introduces participants with trite labels like 'a cleaner who can't stop swearing', and the programme-makers clearly seek to manufacture drama, including a sequence where the aristocrat shows off his Hitler painting and dogs named after Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Kwasi Kwarteng.
One reviewer noted that the aristocrat, Sir Benjamin Slade, is a tabloid mainstay who previously barred 'Guardian readers, Scorpios, drug users, alcoholics, Scots' from a wife casting call. The show's premise of 'settling differences' is undermined by casting such intolerant individuals, and it ultimately feels like a dramatised version of the Daily Mail comments section.
While there are occasional moments of genuine listening between participants, the overall experience is demeaning for everyone involved, not least Ross himself, who is reduced to a disembodied voice. The show has been criticised for platforming racism and classism under the guise of an edgy social experiment.
