GERMANY: Big Brother just got bigger. Tomorrow 16 Germans will move into a specially-constructed village to be filmed by 100 cameras for a television show that producers say will go on "until the medics come, or as long as God and the viewers want".
Big Brother: The Village breaks the next taboo of reality television with a real-life version of the film The Truman Show.
"It's a better world in here. There is no crime, people don't lie to each other: people learn to be better people in here," said Borris Brandt of Endemol Germany, the show's production company.
"We're producing the world's most modern daily soap opera." The 5,000sq m village, built over three months near Cologne, is a miniature world with homes, offices, shops, a farmyard and even a pole-dancing bar.
"We are taking reality television to the next dimension," said producer Rainer Laux.
He said the show will "remain a reflection of society" with "poor", "normal" and "rich" classes of contestants.
The poor contestants will live in a one-room house without running water and only a wood-fired stove for warmth.
They will be forced to sort rubbish, shovel snow and take care of animals in a working farmyard.
Meanwhile the "rich" contestants luxuriate in a 200sq m house filled with designer furniture, a plasma television and swimming pool, but will face weekly contests to stay put.
The contestants for Germany's sixth series of Big Brother are aged between 18 and 43 and include a beauty queen, a fashion journalist and, according to producers, and someone described as a "strange tattooed character".
The villagers will stay as long as they want, with free, regular trips to the village psychiatrist until they are voted out by viewers, or choose to leave themselves.
With no definite "winner", contestants will work and compete for cash prizes, paid out of an annual pot worth € 1 million.
The show will be screened for one hour nightly and 24 hours a day, seven days a week-7 on a special pay channel.
There is no chance of a Big Brother baby. The producers have insisted that any woman who gets pregnant during the show's run will be asked to leave.
The show is not guaranteed success: the previous five series so far have suffered from the law of diminishing returns, with declining media and public interest.
The most recent series ran for an entire year, but nobody in Germany seemed to notice when it ended last week.