“Hell is other people,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre. Surely the creator of No Exit would have loved Channel 4’s new actuality present, Handcuffed, by which pairs of strangers are chained collectively, pressured to eat, sleep, and bathe facet by facet while competing for a money prize. Naturally, the producers have chosen the sorts of companions who make begging for the bolt-cutters really feel extra pressing than profitable 100 thousand kilos. A problematic politician is tied to a black youth activist, a porn star to a housewife, a millionaire to a cleaner, and so forth. You sense they struggled to slim down the shortlist.
True to its promise to heal society’s biggest divides, Handcuffed has united the Guardian and the Daily Mail, with the respective verdicts being “nasty, crass; completely abysmal,” and “sadistic”. I beloved it.
It’s a very long time since something on TV has so completely encapsulated the horror of being with one other particular person, the entire time. Any introvert who has ever struggled to make a brand new relationship work would possibly relate to short-fused hairdresser Nina, wrist-to-wrist with Sara, a lonely mum-of-seven who by no means, ever stops speaking. “You’re like a petulant child!” laments Nina. “Yeah, I am!” her associate agrees.
Despite its “low” credentials, Handcuffed is true to the excessive dramatic spirit of the basic twentieth century existential philosophers, who used exaggerated thought experiments to make audiences think about the dilemmas of on a regular basis existence. It’s pure theatre.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre explains the issue of bridging the divide between the Self and the Other by way of the thought of disgrace. We expertise disgrace solely once we turn out to be conscious of ourselves as seen from the surface: when spying by way of a key gap, we hear the creak of a floorboard behind us, and really feel the sudden jolt of self-knowledge. Handcuffed’s Rob, a tattooed homosexual porn star with a profitable smile, has a suspicion his candy homemaker associate, Charlie, might have some reservations about how he earns his residing. But it’s not till he’s confronted with the total weight of judgement of herself and her husband that his smile falters, and we watch as he hears the metaphorical floorboard creak.
“It’s disgusting,” the husband tells him, pacing his completely manicured garden. “Bringing this lifestyle into our home, into our family.” It’s undeniably a merciless little bit of tv. And but Charlie and Rob handle to push by way of their confrontation, sharing moments the place they get their nails carried out, bond over their tough childhoods, and go tenting collectively. A heat friendship types towards the percentages. These breakthroughs transcend the tawdryness of the format, and have been missed by critics who dismissed the present. How else would these two strangers cross paths? They wouldn’t meet in actuality — but right here, within the hyper-reality of Channel 4, all issues are attainable.
To create artwork that really challenges folks to confront how they dwell their lives … it’s typically essential to go too far
Yes, Handcuffed is voyeuristic — however so was Jean Genet’s sensible and ugly play, The Maids, by which two servants role-play the homicide of their mistress to exorcise their anger over their subjugated position in society. Or extra not too long ago, the extraordinary documentary The Act of Killing which moved real-life killers to really feel the ache of their victims after a few years. To create artwork that really challenges folks to confront how they dwell their lives and why they consider the issues they do, it’s typically essential to go too far. And Jonathan Ross, who has constructed, misplaced, and rebuilt his profession within the shadow of a joke taken too far, has finally discovered a house for this queasiest of abilities. There is a sort of redemption right here.
There are some sly moments. Horse coach Claire expresses her distaste for the youth of immediately, who don’t know the way to work, solely to “go on their phones.” As quickly as she is paired with a laid-back influencer known as Bambi, we sense there could also be some enjoyable. At the chance of spoilers, it’s Claire who comes dangerously near upending the experiment over her unwillingness to be prized away from her telephone.
Phone use is a theme, with a number of contestants struggling visibly with the present’s ban. Sartre was writing within the mid-twentieth century, however we will think about how No Exit would have appeared had his three protagonists, pressured to undergo one another’s firm for all eternity, been capable of placate themselves with a sport of Candy Crush, or put their headphones in. The drip-feed of exterior stimulation is one thing most of us take without any consideration, but we take away it at our peril. For a lot of Handcuffed’s gamers, drawn from all walks of life and all political stripes, the sheer weight of loneliness and the loudness of their very own ideas are more durable to bear than the fixed companionship.
The experiment ends on a surprisingly hopeful observe. Whilst some {couples} crash out with their prejudices reaffirmed, others survive and seem to have fashioned lasting bonds. To paraphrase the twenty-first century thinker Jonathan Ross: different folks could also be hell — however how boring life could be with out them.
