Yesterday, it was revealed that Scarlett Moffatt, of Channel 4’s Gogglebox, will star in a new show called The British Tribe Next Door. In the programme, Moffatt and her family will be living alongside the Himba tribe in Namibia, residing in an exact replica of their County Durham semi-detached house.

I’m not making this up – somebody genuinely took this bizarre, outdated and seriously problematic idea and turned it into a television programme. We’re all familiar with these “us vs them” style documentaries. Confidently presenting themselves as “social experiments”, producers make wide-eyed claims about such shows bringing us all closer – bridging cultural divides to highlight a universal humanity. But generally, they do the exact opposite – compounding our conceptions of “otherness” through crude methods and cack-handed comparisons.

30 TV shows that jumped the shark Show all 30 1 /30 30 TV shows that jumped the shark 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Parks and Recreation Parks and Recreation’s sixth season was filmed while Chris Pratt was on the cusp of becoming a global megastar. To keep him involved, the crew had to head to where the actor was filming his other, bigger projects (hence the season begins with a double episode in London, where he was filming Guardians of the Galaxy). That season also saw Rob Lowe and Rashida Jones leave the show, leading to some patches that were never really covered over. Still, the final episode was still a delight, with Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope meeting Michelle Obama and getting her dream job in Pawnee. But then they made a seventh, completely unnecessary season a few years later… which we should all forget exists. NBC 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Happy Days The show that birthed the phrase “jumping the shark”. Season five of Happy Days saw Fonzie literally jumping over a shark – a moment so absurd that critics were left asking whether the writers had run out of material. The moment became the turning point for Happy Days as the quality gradually began to decline, the inclination of which got steeper after Ron Howard left after season seven. ABC 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Heroes Thanks to stellar reviews and enticing advertising, Heroes quickly became one of the most-popular shows on television in 2006. However, while the charming first season – which centred on a group of people coming to terms with their super-human powers – was a fast-paced addictive ride, the second was a meandering mess. The first few episodes contained so much filler that viewers turned off in their droves. Season three fared no better, and by the conclusion of season four only 4.41 million people were still watching – down from the 16.97 million who watched the season two premiere. NBC Universal 30 TV shows that jumped the shark The X Factor There was once a time when every winner on The X Factor was pretty much guaranteed a Christmas number one. It became such a monotonous routine in the UK that music lovers protested by getting Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name Of” to the coveted top spot in 2009. Coincidentally, the following years have seen the X Factor’s ratings begin to dwindle, mainly thanks to viewers becoming bored of the same sob stories being wheeled out every year. To fix this, Simon Cowell attempted to switch up the judges at an increased rate, scraping the barrel in 2015 by bringing on Nick Grimshaw (the same year that Dermot O’Leary stepped down as presenter, to be replaced by television’s most awkward duo, Caroline Flack and Olly Murs). Despite Louis Walsh, Nicole Scherzinger and Sharon Osbourne (and Dermot) coming back the year after, the damage had already been done. ITV 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Community Stars often outgrow their shows. Midway through the fourth season of Community, Donald Glover, who played Troy, left to pursue a music career as the rapper Childish Gambino. Of course, that did not turn out too badly, with Glover now having a few Grammys on his mantelpiece. Unfortunately, Community was never the same without him, and the dominoes kept falling after that. Chevy Chase also left, while Dan Harmon stopped writing for the show. As a result, the final two seasons received awful reviews. NBC 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Big Brother Big Brother was a big deal. The first few seasons spawned celebrities and managed to attract millions of viewers. While originally a strange social experiment put on by Channel 4, the show devolved into a middling reality TV series where contestants would do anything to prolong their 15 minutes of fame. When the show moved to Channel 5, it was only another knock on the death knell. Channel 5 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Dallas The team behind Dallas were so desperate to bring back Patrick Duffy's character Bobby Ewing that they made the entire ninth season one long dream sequence. Of course, they had initially not known the entire season would be a dream, as Duffy had voluntarily left to pursue other acting jobs. Obviously, things did not go well for the actor, and the writing team put him back into the show – at the expense of viewers, who felt understandably short-changed by the events of 31 episodes being reversed. Note for TV writers: “It was all a dream” is not a good TV trope. CBS 30 TV shows that jumped the shark House of Cards Before Kevin Spacey was kicked off the cast following more than 40 allegations of sexual assault, House of Cards was feeling stuck in the mud. The Underwoods’ journey to power had been fascinating; their struggle to keep power, not so much. When Spacey was rightly dropped, the writers were forced to press on, with little time to rewrite the script as two episodes had already been filmed and needed completely redoing. Despite their best intentions, the final season was a mess – although the show’s legacy had already been tarnished by Spacey. Netflix 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Gogglebox Gogglebox’s premise is preposterously simple – film normal people watching television and capture their conversations. For such a basic recipe to work, all the ingredients need to be perfect, and, for a time, they were. Stephanie and Dominic Parker were the highlights for the first few seasons, and then the Moffatt family, with the quotable Scarlett, joined in the third series. However, fame soon caught up with both families, and they left the show one after the other. Their replacements have never been quite as good. Channel 4 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Top Gear The quality of Top Gear had long dwindled before Matt LeBlanc and Chris Evans took over from Jeremy Clarkson and co. It wasn’t until the trio finally left, though, that fans realised just how awful Top Gear could potentially be. LeBlanc and Evans had no chemistry, the pair awkwardly jostling with each other for screen-time. By the time their first series together had ended, Evans had received so much flack he decided to leave. Top Gear has not yet recovered – although everyone’s fingers are crossed in the hope that Chris Harris, Sabine Schmitz, Paddy McGuinness and Andrew Flintoff can return the show to its former glory. BBC 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Sherlock Sherlock made Benedict Cumberbatch a household name and had three stellar seasons before turning downhill. What great television those seasons were, with the modern take on the classic detective story proving a thrilling watch. Come the Christmas special and the writers had become too enthralled by their own mythos; what was sold as a special episode, set in Victorian England, was actually modern-day Sherlock using drugs to dive into his own subconscious. The episode was a mess – as was the following fourth season. BBC 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Downton Abbey Initially an addictive period drama, Downton Abbey slowly became more and more soapy. The point of no return came during the Christmas day episode “A Journey to the Highlands”, when – just moments after the birth of his child – Matthew Crawley was run over by a milk truck. Some fans were reportedly so outraged that they Tweeted how their Christmases were ruined. ITV 30 TV shows that jumped the shark That 70s Show That 70s Show arguably had multiple “jump the shark” moments throughout its run. One such moment was when the writers introduced Brooke, who fell pregnant after a one-night stand with Ashton Kutcher’s Michael Kelso. The setup was merely a ploy to enable Kutcher to leave the show at the end of the season. Then there was the surprising revelation that Danny Masterson’s Steven Hyde had two fathers. But perhaps the moment that best signals the show’s downward spiral is when they decided to switch the actor who played Laurie Forman. After Lisa Robin Kelly had played Forman for five seasons, the showrunners unexpectedly – and without explanation – brought in Christina Moore to take over the character. FOX 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Buffy the Vampire Slayer Buffy has legions of fans, and for good reason. The first few seasons mesh funny quips and lovelorn lust to perfection, while it’s all strung together by a high-school story about a vampire-killing badass. Things started to waver slightly at the beginning of season six, when the series resolved their “is Buffy dead?” cliffhanger with the Scoobie gang resurrecting her. From there, the characters became shadows of their former selves, the story going to much darker places than before, including one controversial storyline about attempted rape. The show was never the same again UPN 30 TV shows that jumped the shark The Brady Bunch Struggling to keep viewers watching, the writers of The Brady Bunch decided something needed to change. Rather than work with already-established characters, they decided to introduce a new child: Cousin Oliver, played by Robbie Rist, who was the show’s youngest actor (nine-years-old) at the time. This decision may have been intended to make The Brady Bunch “adorable” again, but viewers turned away at the obvious attempt to shoehorn something new into the show. The show was cancelled five episodes later and it sparked the phrase “Cousin Oliver Syndrome” – a trope where a show introduces a child character to boost ratings but fails. (Some fans believe the late introduction of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s sister Dawn is an example of this.) ABC 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Two and a Half Men Two and a Half Men was, for a long time, one of the most-watched TV series in the United States. Why exactly? Well, that would likely be down to Charlie Sheen, whose obnoxious, heightened version of himself (his character’s also named Charlie) charmed the nation. Sheen’s private life, though, soon outdid his fictional counterpart, with the actor going into rehab and making headlines with his bizarre rants (winning!). The network took notice and replaced Sheen with Ashton Kutcher, whose naïve-shtick never quite worked. CBS 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Battlestar Galactica The first seasons of Battlestar Galactica (the updated series) were phenomenal television, but that did not stop the science fiction show having some slightly questionable moments. Perhaps the most famous came towards the season three finale, when the five remaining Cylons (human replicas) are outed. They are discovered (or discover themselves) when the Final Five – Tory, Colonel Tigh, Tyrol, and Anders – all come together after hearing a version of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”. It’s cumbersome, silly, and the tipping point for the once great show. Sci-Fi 30 TV shows that jumped the shark The Simpsons The famous British poet John Cooper Clarke has argued many times that The Simpsons was one of best shows on television. “There is no better spokesperson for the modern proletarian male than Homer J Simpson,” he once said. Clarke was likely referring to only the first dozen or so seasons of The Simpsons as, since then, the animated show about the eponymous blue-collar family has suffered in its attempts to remain quite as relevant and funny. Season 30, as a result, contains the least-watched episode of The Simpsons ever: less than two million tuned in to the episode “I'm Dancing as Fat as I Can”, guest starring Netflix boss Ted Sarandos. Fox 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Arrested Development Despite stellar reviews and an adoring (if somewhat small) fanbase, Arrested Development was cancelled after its third season. Arrested Development should probably have stayed cancelled. Netflix brought back the acclaimed series for a fourth season in 2013, changing the format so each episode centred on a different character. Critics called the new approach awkward, saying it missed the character interactions that made the show so great. The showrunners seemingly agreed as they later released a remixed version of season four that followed the classic formula. That release came just before season five which has, to put it lightly, been decimated by critics. 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The British Tribe Next Door is shaping up to be yet another insensitive disaster. Channel 4’s head of factual entertainment, Alf Lawrie, revealed the thinking behind the show in a statement. “This series contrasts two worlds on a spectacular scale – but at its heart, is about the extraordinary relationships it creates,” he explained. “Scarlett and the Himba are the perfect foils, both hospitable, curious, friendly... and sharing wicked sense of humour.”

The troubling implication is that a single British woman and an entire African community consisting of 50,000 people have equal cultural clout. Already, the Himba are being dehumanised – clearly, they’re not seen as individuals with diverse personality traits.

Despite the eyebrow-raising claims of Channel 4 execs, we know that programmes such as this one feed on our voyeuristic instincts, our problematic conception of the “exotic” and the colonially inflected curiosity that our nation inflicts on other communities.

In 2019, one would hope that the “they don’t come from here – but they’re people as well!” message wouldn’t feel particularly radical. In this day and age, rather than just gawping at foreignness and comparing cultural differences in a reductive way, we should be using our primetime documentary slots and school history lessons to explore colonialism and its economic, political and social legacy.

I had to dive into the nether regions of Wikipedia to find out about Namibia’s brutal experience of German colonization. The country saw genocide at the hands of the western nation, and some historians believe that the treatment of Namibians may have provided a model for the Holocaust.

These horrific historical details are too frequently ignored, much like the reality of our own colonial past. But, by contrast, there is no shortage of tabloid headlines referring to the “sex-swapping” Himba tribe in relation to this new entertainment show. We still have an appetite for sensationalist details which we know will scandalise a British audience and enforce the misplaced feeling of moral superiority that underpinned our own colonial history.

Channels may profess noble aims with shows like The British Tribe Next Door, but western countries cannot meaningfully engage with communities like the Himba until they acknowledge and understand their colonial past.

There is no such thing as harmless cultural exchanges when they exist against a recent historical backdrop of exploitation and jingoistic endeavour. In post-Brexit Britain, the sad reality may be that we have regressed to the kind of thinking which, one would hope, was left in centuries past.

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Perhaps Channel 4 is right in thinking a reminder that our shared humanity eclipses our cultural differences is necessary and thought-provoking at this turbulent political time. But it’s incredibly worrying if we can’t look further than this basic observation, and if we can’t understand that there are more pressing questions to be asking than “how much do the Himba tribe have in common with Scarlett Moffatt?”

We churn out endless documentaries about the Tudors, but fail to designate sufficient airtime to the recent, relevant story of colonialism. Instead, we create ludicrous, surreal and potentially damaging shows like The British Tribe Next Door and pretend they’re breaking new ground.