Extreme problems

We cannot help but feel that television producers have only begun to scratch the surface of public demand for extreme documentaries. The rescue services have had to airlift a woman from a cave on the Scottish island of Mull, where she was living for Japanese television, in what might be called a copycatumentary, after the success of the silliness on Taransay in the Hebrides.

We cannot help but feel that television producers have only begun to scratch the surface of public demand for extreme documentaries. The rescue services have had to airlift a woman from a cave on the Scottish island of Mull, where she was living for Japanese television, in what might be called a copycatumentary, after the success of the silliness on Taransay in the Hebrides.

Now the BBC is to make a series following attention-seekers' attempts to survive an SAS training course. The possibilities of the genre must surely be greater. How about putting an unassuming Swede in charge of the England football team and seeing how long his sanity holds? What about getting someone pretending to be Margaret Thatcher to suggest to William Hague that she might drop into a speech opening a charity hostel for single mothers a call for Britain to pull out of Europe, and film his reaction? Now that really would be extreme.