Remember reading about the reality TV show that's set in a Benedictine monastery? Here's another article about it. From The Guardian: Get the abbey habit.
Posted on May 9, 2005 10:49 PM. Filed under: religion.If you wanted to draw up a list of rules to improve reality TV, then banning the contestants from speaking, having sex or indulging their own egos would be a useful start. And these are the challenges facing the contestants in an extremely upmarket version of the genre.
In The Monastery - which most resembles The Apprentice reimagined as The Novice - a quintet of civilian men attempt to live by the rule of St Benedict at Worth Abbey in Sussex, checking their lip, will, ego and libido at the door. No prize is on offer, except presumably, as the full-time inmates of the house would say, the promise of eternal life.
The first rule of St Peter (Bazalgette, patron saint of Big Brother) is that reality TV depends on casting and, in this case, the principle has been religiously applied with both monks and men. The novices sent in by the BBC include an Irishman once jailed for paramilitary activities, a PHD student flirting with Buddhism and a recovering addict who works on the fringes of the sex industry.
But the star of the show is the man who, in the context of the genre, should probably be called Big Father. The abbot, Dom Christopher, combines an actorish voice and looks with a kind of brain that has recently been more or less banned from television. His explanation to his guests of why it's the people we most dislike who can teach us most is certainly the most intellectually challenging thing ever said on reality TV and perhaps within the medium as a whole. [continue]