The voice doesn’t bother me. The family friendly demeanour of it does.
He should be cruel, and punish the housemates way, way more.
He was never meant to be a ‘friend’.
The whole concept of George Orwell’s ‘Big Brother‘ was that it was an awful dystopian nightmare.
The housemates are supposed to be angry with him, and fear him.
Huge failure about this season..
I agree with your points that I highlighted. But there is an angle that many of you seem to have forgotten. During the last few seasons of BBAU, the BB voice has been anything but constant. Usually there were at least two different voices. Occasionally there was a really good one but most of the time the voice wasn't suited at all.
What they did get right was BB referring to himself in the third person. There were also punishments for disrespecting BB.
But the lack of continuity in BB's voice didn't inspire to stick by the rules.
In BBUK, they often had three (or more?) voices in a single episode.
And then there was the gender thing. BB stands for Big Brother... not Big Sister. If it were Big Sister - it would be BS... right?
Yet, on BBUK they had women/girls doing the voice quite frequently. Gender equality and all that. Political correctness gone haywire. The worst was a girl with a strong Scottish accent who sounded as if she read (poorly) from a third grade school book.
I have been trying to figure out why, even here in Australia the producers couldn't stick to the strictness of the concept.
To my surprise and also delight I heard a completely new type of BB voice at the beginning of 2020. I was instantly reminded of HAL9000, the onboard computer on the spaceship Discovery 1 in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey.
HAL's voice was pleasant and friendly and spoken in the first person. He was a 'friend' to the House Mates... that is, the Astronauts who were secluded on their ship... it is good to have an all powerful friend in such a situation, one who keeps an eye on things and keeps us safe.
Even though HAL's voice was pleasant, one couldn't help but think that something bad would happen sooner or later. And THIS is the genius. Lull the crew or HMs into a sense of pleasant security so that in the end they will be shocked by the unforgiving reality of their harsh existence. Punishments and rations. Periods of seclusion in cages or white rooms etc.
The opening of the first episode started with some Overture by Mozart.. later on we heard a bit of Beethoven's Pastorale. 2001: A Space Odyssey starts with "Also sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss which opens the senses for something grand to come.
The beauty of the music, compared to the constant mind numbing thumping of some computer generated sound bites, I feel is a pleasant change. HAL's (BB's) voice can lure you into a false sense of security. One thing I've noticed is THIS particular voice is very clever. The owner thinks fast and doesn't get stumped.
A final word: The voice is perfectly all right, IMO better than most previous ones and there is nothing wrong with he referring to himself in the first person. After all, he is a friend who could anytime malfunction and... if only the concept were tightened up with stricter rules and punishments he could be just as cruel as the Orwellian ogre.