The Year of the Sex Olympics

That's how Nancy Banks Smith - the greatest TV reviewer ever - described this play.

I saw this play as part of a BBC archive trial. It is funny to hear one producer suggest a new idea for a programme: "I know let's put some people on a deserted island and just watch them." 32 years before Survivor or Big Brother. Of course, Nigel Kneale probably got paid £1000. John De Mol milked about Euro 1bn from the actual show.

Not all the predictions are true - the general public are shown to be lifeless drones who just watch TV all day and aside from Liverpool this has not come true.

Also, the viewer satisfaction ratings at the time were low and I think if I had seen the play in 1968 I would not have liked it as much. We like it now because of its predictive quality rather than for its artistic merits.

Finally, Banks Smith said you had to see the play in colour and only a B&W print exists.

BTW, there have been deaths from reality shows - suicide of an evictee on the first reality show - Family Robinson, the forerunner of Survivor. Suicide of an evictee on a US boxing TV show.

On a future overly-crowded Earth, the masses are distracted by televised sex and entertained by ridiculous plot-less programming but, when then the 'media elites' discover that their flaccid viewers are more entertained when watching pain, they debut a cruel new show where forgotten emotions such as "fear and anger, worry and pain and ... grief" are put on display. Written by Nigel Kneale, who had penned a screen treatment of Orwell's '1984' for the BBC (there are similarities between the stories, notably in keeping the masses content and in the simplification of language) and the well-received 'Quatermass' sci-fi series in the 1950s, the film is often lauded for predicting the rise of 'reality TV' in the 2000s. This may be the first film to touch on the premise of people's 'real' lives (suffering or otherwise) being used for entertainment although the concept has been around in sci-fi books for some time. The budget BBC production is entertaining in a retro way, notably the future fashions which extend the 'paisley and flower-power' look of the 60s to the extreme. The truncated language takes some getting used to and the sound and images on the B/W survivor I watched on-line is a bit rough (the BBC, in their lack of wisdom, wiped the original colour prints), but otherwise this is a fascinating throw-back and Kneale deserves acknowledgement for making some of the more fulfilled predications in TV sci-fi (but the media was as ripe for this kind of satire then as it is now). Too bad we got crappy TV instead of flying cars.

I first saw this in the early 70's, it was considered then to be nothing more than science fiction. Intended to be a glimpse of a world where anything goes in the name of entertainment, as well as a warning. It was meant to be an extreme satirical extrapolation, alluding to a future time, in the hope that it might not happen. Spooky really!!

This theme has been done to death many times since, but it was still fresh and original back then. I also remember a TV programme around about the same time called 'The Machine Stops', based on a short story by E M Forster. Although somewhat dated and naive now, bear in mind that it was written in 1909. Its main theme is that humans eventually become alienated and remote from their surroundings, preferring to communicate via TV screens, referred to as Cinematophote. This happened, in the fictional world, because the Earth was contaminated and the inhabitants had to go underground. Obviously the Internet, TV or email was not known then, but it predicted all three, it is strange how fact has 'triumphed' over fiction.

We haven't got to the next stage yet, whereby humans are entirely isolated from their surroundings, but who can say what the future portends?

Imagine a world where 'high drive' people with no souls push the boundaries of entertainment for the 'low drive' people - the watching, inert masses, dead at 35. The masses who do not 'do', only 'watch'. A world where a show called 'Sport Sex' puts forwards participants for the Sex Olympics. A world where art is suppressed and tension of any kind is not allowed.

By the time laughter comes from the masses not because of a custard pie fight, but because of a bloody death, you can see how the experiment of 'The Live Life Show', starring a high drive couple and their underachieving child, transported to an island where they have to fend for themselves as in the old days, away from Output, will end.

In a cast who are uniformly effective, Tony Vogel, Suzanne Neve, Brian Cox and Leonard Rossiter stands out. As a look into a future dominated by reality TV, it is quite shocking to stop and realize how far along the road we are, and where it could end. Kneale's play certainly makes its point, although it takes a while for the story to get into its stride.

Originally made in colour but now only existing in black and white, the sets and costumes definitely get lost in the version we now have available. But as an indication of edgy sci-fix drama of the kind which wouldn't get commissioned now (they'd be too busy commissioning The Live Life Show), it still pulls no punches.

There's no doubt in my mind the most influential dramatist in the history of British television is Nigel Kneale . He was the script writer who defined that television drama should be as ambitious as cinema while remaining as intimate as theater . He will always be synonymous with his QUATERMASS serials but has also contributed other great pieces of drama over the decades . One of them THE YEAR OF THE SEXUAL OLYMPICS has steadily become something of a legend in itself in that it predicts a future obsession with what is now described as " reality TV " , so does the teleplay live up to its legendary status ?

In my opinion not really . OLYMPICS does have some very clever concepts but somewhere along the line the ideas seem somewhat badly executed . The story itself seems to owe a lot to Orwell's 1984 telescreens aren't used to spy on people but to rather control them . People are natural voyeurs and if you give them what they want via the telescreen they'll eventually become desensitized to their desires . You can understand the point behind Kneale's logic but you're also left with the feeling that Kneale has failed to bring a bigger subtext to his subject . Certainly in his 1979 QUATERMASS serial you recognise a wonderful subtext of science vs faith with science at its most dangerous and destructive eventually saving the human race but there's a spark of genius missing from this 1968 drama

The production values do not help either . I for one am grateful that it's preserved on monochrome . Can you imagine how garish and gaudy everything would have looked in colour ? It's a constant problem of late60s/early 70s film and television where the future tends to look too futuristic to remain credible . Kneale doesn't help his cause either by having everyone talk in a trans-Atlantic " Newspeak " . Again you can understand the thinking behind this - the World has become assimilated by American pop culture - but combined with Michael Elliot's rather weak direction it's like listening to a parody of American film moguls and makes for a rather ridiculous acting style not helped by deliberately written idiosyncratic speech patterns where

" Does he know what he's saying ? " becoming

" He know what he say ? which soon becomes irritating . It's not helped either by the casting of Leonard Rossiter and Brian Cox whose future well known roles become more of a hindrance than an advantage

All told THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS is a massive disappointment . As many people here have said it shows sign of prophecy but this is heavily negated by rather poor production values , weak directing but most of all a lack of streamlined storytelling on the part of the writer . One can't help thinking how well this drama would have been remembered if it wasn't for the birth of reality TV at the turn of the century