Back in the noughties, reality TV decided to see what would happen if you stuck a bunch of kids in a house with no adults to tell them what to do.
Basically, it’s Big Brother but the housemates are all kids and probably twice as much drama.
This is just what TV was like in the 00s, you could get away with all sorts of weird s**t that makes you look back on what they put on our screens and leaves you wondering how the hell they got away with it.
Leaving a bunch of kids alone in a house for days at a time and filming the results was controversial, but they ended up doing more series of the show.
Back in 2002 a documentary called Boys Alone put 10 boys into a house by themselves, the house and garden they lived in was stocked with toys, paints, books and games, as well as a kitchen full of food so that they could cook meals for themselves, but many of the kids didn’t do much cooking and instead lived off cereal and fizzy drinks.
As you can imagine, leaving a bunch of kids alone in a house to do whatever they liked seemed fun for the kids at first, but eventually someone has to tidy up and put dinner on.
That show was followed up by Girls Alone, and I’m sure you can guess what change that show made to the format.
Things were slightly less chaotic in the girls house as they designated people to cook and clean, something the boys didn’t do.
Years later in 2009 another series titled Boys and Girls Alone was released and it had the two houses as ‘villages’ which were kept separate from each other until the final episode, and the kids staying for longer than a week.
As you can imagine, sending a bunch of kids to stay in a house without adults isn’t really a recipe for calmness and stability.
Boys and Girls Alone ended up being a chaotic mess as the kids ended up falling out, crying and fighting which prompted the calls to cancel the 2009 show.
It attracted a whole load of complaints, including from children’s author Michael Morpurgo who was one of many to sign a letter condemning the show for ‘child abuse and cruelty’.
Channel 4 said at the time that the welfare of the kids involved was their ‘first priority’, and the show fortunately had chaperones on hand to step in if the kids ended up in actual danger.
At the time Boys and Girls Alone was being released to much controversy a woman whose son appeared on the original Boys Alone show told the Mirror the 2002 show had not been a good experience for him.
Ruth Lewis’ son Sam had been on Boys Alone and the mum said she’d regretted it ever since, explaining that if she could go back she’d stop him from going on it, and Sam agreed that he wouldn’t do it if he had another chance to.
Sam said: “Any boy would say yes to an opportunity like that, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. I’d never missed my mum more in my life.
“It was mayhem and became depressing as the house divided into the two gangs and war broke out.
“The place was trashed and I’m ashamed to say that I even turned into a bit of a hooligan.”
