Watching people watch TV - what's that like? Calum Henderson turns on the Gogglebox to find out.
For a show with the tagline "unscripted, uncensored, unlike anything", the first episode of Gogglebox NZ a few weeks ago felt pretty unnatural. Nobody sits that close together on the couch these days, you know? And kids certainly aren't watching Naked Attraction with their parents. The chat all felt a bit forced and awkward – almost as if everybody had a camera pointing right at their face.
If you watched that first episode and decided to tap out, honestly, fair enough – but you're missing out on some absolute gold now that the show has started to hit its straps.
It's not just that the households have relaxed and become more comfortable with the cameras in the room. The editors, whose hellish job it is to sift through hundreds of hours of footage a week, have also quickly developed a keen eye for the kinds of tiny moments and individual quirks that always made the original UK version of show such a delight to watch. And it's probably also taken us, the viewers, an episode or two to fully warm to the concept.
It takes a while, but you grow to love all these weird Kiwis who decided it would be fine to allow themselves to be filmed watching hours and hours of telly every week. You start to notice the little things, like how George, the patriarch of the Miszey family, never says a word or changes facial expression, or how Ange of "Ange and Tinks" will sometimes sit there stroking a cushion likeness of her dog, even though the actual dog is right there next to her on the couch.
