Series 7 - The Contenders

Phoenix Picture House, June 2001.

. This is an ambitious film, which has to tread a fine line between realism and satire, and, I think, pretty much succeeds. The premise is simple. "The Contenders" is a TV game show in which six people are picked randomly by government lottery and each is required to kill the others, with only one survivor to pass to the next series, and ultimately, with luck, to freedom from the show's clutches. The film is presented in the form of several successive episodes of Series 7, exactly as the television viewer would see them.

First we meet Dawn, the reigning champion, as it were, as she polishes off the last of her previous rivals, then we see the horrified reactions of the new contestants, as the news of their participation is broken to them. Much of the film's effectiveness derives from just how ordinary and useless these people are. Connie the god-fearing nurse, Franklin the elderly paranoid, Tony the idiot, Lindsay the teenager and Jeff the cancer victim are all shown to be more or less dysfunctional in their first few scenes. As they argue with their families and with the cameramen who follow them everywhere, and as they demonstrate quite amazing hopelessness in the matter of their own survival, the viewer is forced to wonder what sort of society produces these people. The whole idea of the programme itself soon seems much less outrageous and more vaguely inevitable. Where would the gumption to resist it be found? Not in this bunch.

But the fascination does not stem from seeing incompetents die horribly. It comes from watching the all too familiar voiceover as it tries to make heroes and villains out of them. One is aware of the facile moralising, the falseness of the commentator's righteous attitude, and the blatant trickery of the editing and presentation. But just enough, in this viewer's case, to be uncomfortably reminded that this is essentially how most TV works, while remaining very much caught up in the action.

In short, I was made to notice, repeatedly, how much I am satisfied by dramatic images and sound-bites, however vacuous, and to notice some of the strings which are pulled to elicit my knee-jerk reactions. I really did want Dawn and Jeff to ride off into the sunset, however temporarily. I was quite revolted by how much I wanted Dawn to shoot the smug TV exec who was holding her baby to ransom.

The final scene was very cleverly done in other respects. From the moment the voice claims that the original film was destroyed, but that no expense was spared duplicating it, I was thinking: "What really happened, that they didn't want to show? Are these the real people, I mean actors, made up to look different, or stand-ins made up to look similar?" and similarly foolish thoughts, while simultaneously being gripped by the tension of it all.

And this is where the film succeeds. It doesn't preach, it doesn't moralise, and the presentation is entirely low-brow. And yet it manages to make you think about all sorts of things, and even laugh a few times. If you can cope with the subject matter, then I really do recommend it.

Ian Threadgill 25/05/01