Well, I tend to feel ambivalent about them, really. They are certainly a very unimaginative way of filling in our TV scheduling (and I think we, as performers, should feel rightly frustrated that they rule our airwaves to such an extent, because they stand in for better quality drama that might [?1] otherwise be getting made), but sometimes I think they can be quite compulsive. For some reason, I don't find I'm a Celeb quite so hatefully tedious as many of them (perhaps because it's not really on forever), and I quite like the notion that something of the desperateness of the whole enterprise is so palpably sent up on screen - these sad so - called celebs know exactly what they've let themselves in for, and deserve to have to put up with it! Sadly, I think the joke is on us the viewers ultimately as having much fun it might be to see some holier than thou minor celeb having rats tipped into his/her hair, you can bet they'll be earning a nice sum for it all at the end of the day.
I've always felt some of the live broadcast 24 hour stuff (hugely tedious) is interesting for an actor though - if you watch it with the sound off for ten minutes, it's fascinating to see how people actually behave in conversation with one another, when they aren't worrying about what the cameras are doing - great mannerisms you can spot, and put into your next screen performance, for instance!
The other thing is, of course, how packaged all this stuff actually is - it's all so well edited together that there's an artform involved in making a story out of all the mundane day to day business. And so, you can't trust any of it for a minute. The editors know exactly who they want you to love, hate, think is a wuss etc.
My sister who was involved in the (I hope) slightly more highbrow Edwardian Country House for Channel 4 a few years back, 'played' a housemaid for them, which involved her having to work from about 6.00 in the morning to 10.00 at night every day while wearing a corset for 2 months. She used to have to contact us through handwriting letters in pencil! Anyway, because she was quiet, and a hard worker, she wasn't really deemed 'interesting' enough to be used much on screen - and so, she never ended up appearing in the finished product much. More interestingly, the producers wanted to tell the story they needed to tell - admittedly, they were trying to make an educational documentary for a certain audience, and some contributions would have been decidedly unsuitable - but I found it interesting that my sister had to go to hospital at one point (because her asthma was so badly affected by clearing out the grates every morning) and that she had some very worrying things to say to the diary room camera about life without proper sanitary towels!! I actually thought all this stuff would have given us viewers significant insight into some of the real horrors and nastiness of living a life as a domestic servant in the early 1900's, but they didn't like it, and so, although it happened and was significant, it never made the final cut.
