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Television

Was BBC1’s Rooney show more scripted reality than documentary?

Plus: why are old people on TV never allowed to behave like old people? BBC4's Close to the Edge reviewed

10 October 2015

9:00 AM

10 October 2015

9:00 AM

Close to the Edge (BBC4, Tuesday) feels very much like an idea conceived during a particularly good night in the BBC bar. Why not take the ‘scripted reality’ methods of such youth hits as The Only Way Is Essex and apply them to a group of over-65s living in Bournemouth?

So it is that the chosen oldies are given one main characteristic each, and required to act out events from their own lives — events that might or might not have happened if the cameras weren’t there.

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