Big Brother is jam-packed with people saying the exact opposite of what they mean.
This is gold-dust for writers. It helps remind us that our characters should rarely speak their brains in a direct, on-the-nose fashion ("Daphne, I love you but I also feel insecure!"). It can be devastatingly effective when they occasionally do, but these sudden outbursts of unexpurgated truth are all the more powerful because they momentarily deactivate the filters through which most of us - and especially characters in drama - speak.
Take this as an example: Tammy from Tamworth has been nominated for eviction, but absolutely doesn't care and in fact she can't wait to get out! To the point where, when she does get evicted, she goes so far as to shout "Yes! Thank you!" and jump for joy, just to show how incredibly fine she is with the nation booting her out the door. Or she might announce she's prematurely leaving mid-week, because she's bored of the whole experience and has achieved what she came here to achieve... as opposed to simply being scared shitless of rejection. You won't get a better example of people saying the exact opposite of what they mean and how they really feel. Drama fuel, right there.
People in Big Brother are also trapped with each other for weeks, so they will generally only explode into direct conflict when either absolutely cornered or they simply can't take any more. So there's more passive aggression going on than you could shake a tweet at. There's also a whole host of bubbling, brooding tension, often conveyed solely by the look on one housemate's face when another leaves the room. Good scripts thrive on this kind of Purely Visual Information and Big Brother is shrewdly to pile in as much as possible. All this stuff may very well reflect the tension in the family you're writing a kitchen sink drama about - or your sitcom set anywhere, since the vast majority of sitcoms are all about people being trapped.
Then there's the fact that, in almost every Big Brother contestants' head, they are the star of the show. In fiction, even Scene 43a's hotel doorman should come across as a real, rounded person with hopes, fears, personality and a past - even if none of those specifics actually make the page. That doorman in your script shouldn't think of himself as a bit-part with two lines: in his head, he's the centre of the universe. Thinking this way may well help us write smaller characters who manage to transcend that ghetto of fictional people who act as if they only blip into existence when the protagonist is around.
Yes, yes, of course, I know - Big Brother is absolutely awash with ludicrous artifice. It's as fake as a unicorn's wig and shallower than an ant's paddling pool. And as much as I still love it, there's now inevitably far too much second-guessing among housemates as to how the public will perceive them. What I'm saying, is that some of that very fakery can be used to your advantage, as a writer. The tension, passive aggression and all those bare-faced lies about emotions and feelings may well fill a small tank in your brain, ready to be siphoned off later into your fiction. Reality TV can often be way more real than most give it credit for.
Could it really be a coincidence that Big Brother evictees ascend a staircase on their way out?
