The reboots are only six weeks long so suffer from that with too many housemates and backdoor evictions but otherwise the first two are watchable enough with enough stories going on. Didn't watch the third myself - they put too many right wing political knobheads in there who were just not watchable.
If you want to try something shorter to test the water the second Celeb BB revival series is perhaps a better bet than the first.
The reboots are only six weeks long so suffer from that with too many housemates and backdoor evictions but otherwise the first two are watchable enough with enough stories going on. Didn't watch the third myself - they put too many right wing political knobheads in there who were just not watchable.
If you want to try something shorter to test the water the second Celeb BB revival series is perhaps a better bet than the first.
The show itself also focused way too much on political stuff rather than just showcasing fun or dramatic moments that are based from their time in the house. Because the show itself only focuses on two things apparently: political talk and tasks.
I haven't watched the third revival series because of that and the reasons mentioned as well. I heard that there's an episode in the finale where a task took the majority of the episode, as described here: (I hate this wikipedia page with a passion - they put way too much detail on each summary that's not a summary anymore)
Ended up deciding to watch Season 14 / 2013 as I had thought it was one I had not watched (I may have started it and dropped it) before we eventually make our way to 2020s BBUK as a safer choice - thanks both!
Ended up deciding to watch Season 14 / 2013 as I had thought it was one I had not watched (I may have started it and dropped it) before we eventually make our way to 2020s BBUK as a safer choice - thanks both!
I just finished 14, It had a lot of characters and they really played well with the theme of Secrets & Lies (my season cap off posts coming shortly). Also nearly up to the first eviction of CBB12.
Saturday: Mini task Marcus Bentley announces actions to the house including a big Food fight + Gina cleaning it up, Pillow fight, Sam and Jack holding hands and walking around the garden, and Charlie & Dexter in the treehouse telling each other how they feel about each other plus a kiss from Charlie to Dexter - Twice.
Later they get a Caribbean beach bbq party and limbo game with special celeb guest Levi Roots (who was on one of the recent two CBBs on ITV). Charlie and Dexter are still trying to work each other out and whatever the status of their ârelationshipâ is, with both in the diary room Dexter saying they might see if theyâll remain friends on the outside as far as he concerned in the house itâs not going any further, hampered by the love triangle thing perhaps, but Charlie reiterating to BB she doesnât like him in that way.
Sunday: Sophie gets a word association diary room task for sweets. Thereâs a pas to the final up for grabs, but only if the housemates vote unanimously. Dexter puts on a bit of an impassioned case, however the votes come in and nearly all of them are different, including no one voting for Charlie, which has her having a teary moment in the bathroom after speaking with Dexter.
Monday: The housemates speculate that there might be a twist with the last noms like Everyone is up but because Charlie was the only one that didnât get a vote in the pass to the final vote, she is the one that will get it.
Mini Task for Sam to win more treats the less Housemates laugh at his Stand up comedy show Samâs LOL Fest. He must try to be unfunny but the housemates laugh at a few so he only gets one Cupcake.
Face to Face Noms puts everyone except Gina and Sophie up. Gina and the others question how much time Charlie and Dexter are spending with each other and Charlie following him around now Hazels left, Gina also questions and reflects on Charlieâs time in the house.
Tuesday: Rescue Squad HQ shopping task begins, they answer the flash phone for different emergency tasks such as catching dropping food out of the town hall building on fire, etc. Gina and Sam go to the Sewer (large task room) and have to press buttons simultaneously after breaking apart taped together on a chair to save the food items from a Laser, which they complete.
Later Charlie and Dexter must unscrew plates to 3 quotes from BOTS guests Vanessa Feltz, Terry Christian and Joe Swash and answer them by cutting the wire of the face of the housemate to a bomb of food items plus Tweets from fans in 5 minutes which they also complete and get to read the fans tweets on the TV later.
Charlie brings up to Dexter she hopes heâs been genuine and its not a game plan Dexter gets a bit taken aback and Charlie says forget it just lets get on with the last few days in the house.
Wednesday: Finale of shopping task, Dexter and Joe must move and manoeuvre their cuffed piece along a pipe track in the sewer to other side of room and press the steamroller switch off before it steamrolls all the food items theyâve collected thus far outside. They make it with a lot of items.
Next the housemates are all called to the lounge area where theres some podiums for the nominees and the lighting goes dark. Theyâre told they will each go one by one to the task room to select the lowest amount they would walk for out of the prize fund. Dexter and Charlie rock off for going last, which Dexter wins. Also playing into it was the amounts on the wall in a 10x10 ish grid were not in any apparent order or increments except the obvious ones like highest being ÂŁ100K and lowest being just ÂŁ1. Once selected, they put it inside their briefcase to reveal at the end, kinda Deal or No Deal style, so the next one coming in mightâve found it hard to deduce what the highest amount left actually was.
Sam takes the 100K, The Twins dither a bit over the mid 90âs amounts and go for the 96,850 over the 95K, Charlie takes the 99K, and lastly Dexter was revealed to have taken the ÂŁ88,800. BB then reveals no one is going anywhere and this exercise was yet another lie. I thought it was pretty well done twist actually as a variation on last seasons White Room twist to get them talking about their motivations heading into the finale. The sting in the tail is Dexter for being the âleast selfishâ (in a twisted kinda way as was later discussed) has bought himself a place in the final, but now must replace himself with either Gina or Sophie to face eviction this Friday. He reluctantly chooses Sophie, which she understands having a close friendship with Gina.
This conundrum of a twist of course sets the house discussing it for the rest of the night, with Sam calling Dexter out for coming across like a game player for his explanation to Charlie at first being he, as a gambler, sussed out all the remaining figures, however somehow failed to see that there was both a 90K and 95K figure remaining above 88K, but also he wanted to stay and not leave, and didnât want to leave with the ultimate lowball of just ÂŁ1 leaving the eventual winner with the bulk of the remainder, which wouldâve surely meant guaranteed eviction if it werenât a lie or perhaps something else to the twist maybe.
Looking back there wasnât actually that many figures though in the 90-100K range iirc, so anyone going last wouldâve had a slightly difficult time figuring out if 90 or 95 wasnât the highest lowest iykwim figure left anyway, or Dexter couldâve also softened it more perhaps by lowballing it below half, taking a ÂŁ30K or 40K amount still leaving the winner with the bulk of the remainder if he had left with it, instead of the 11,200 it would have been. I dunno it was a good twist on the twist, a lot of conflicting ways and angles to think about what would have been a good way to play it to still come out of it with your image in the game in the best light possible, especially the person going last.
Thursday: Gina gets a secret task to be Big Brothers Best Friend with an earpiece giving style advice to Sam, saying to Charlie she thinks she should go on Friday, and causing a strop, she has it out with the Twins gossiping about her. BB reveals all later on.
Friday: Applause by Lady Gaga is the soundtrack of the wake up montage, you can tell itâs August 2013, and they used it quite a bit over the week as ill mention in the CBB12 opening, haha. Gina and Dexter get a mini task to be genies for the others, doing things for them like a makeover for Sophie, Massage for Charlie, Playing football with Sam and they sing Karaoke to I Will Survive for the twins (BOTS also shows them asking them to act like seals in the pool).
Twins are saved first in the Eviction, Sophie is evicted much to Charlieâs shock she thought she was going (and apparently it was a close one under 2% of the evict vote). Charlie and Dexter still at odds over what they are, Charlie still saying part of her thinks hes genuine and the other unsure if sheâs being mugged off. Dexter doesnât know how he can make it any clearer to her and says he loves her even if nothings gonna happen and wants her to know that. The others are also discussing it as usual.
Saturday and Sunday: The Final 5 have a press conference style set up where they answer viewer questions, video questions from Vanessa Feltz, John McCririck and Judi James, and see some video messages from the diary room from some of the ex housemates like Dan, Callum and Hazel. Afterwards they have a dinner making toasts and hearing some messages from home, Jackie comes on for Charlie. Sam tells Gina he admires her and would want a gf like her haha. Everyone makes their final thoughts on the Season.
Finale night, the order is Charlie, Jack & Joe, Gina, Dexter, and Sam winning.
BOTS: Some guests this week included TOWIEâs Bobby Norris, BB8âs Liam back and having a go at doing Emmaâs Autocue, Will Best was on the âLast Thursday of Civilianâ party themed episode. Matt Johnson filled in for Iain Lee on BOTP this week as he was abroad, with Sophieâs nan Iris also joining her on the panel. Dr Pam Spurrâs segment was about who of the last 5 CBB winners the housemates compared themselves to, and Diane Youdale led Hazel and AJ in some aerobics in a VT.
Quite a few musical guests this week, there was Tich with her song âObsessionâ, BB12âs Jay McKray with âDanceâ, a 1D tribute act (âOne Direction Adventureâ) for the party ep singing âKiss Youâ, The Vamps with âCan We Danceâ, and in the post finale ep, Jemima, Wolfy, Jackie, Dan, Callum, Hazel and Sophie appeared in a music video set to Will Youngâs âJealousyâ to cap off the season.
I thought this season was pretty well done, the way the theme of Secrets and Lies was woven in. Emma did a good job at hosting and doing double duty mid week on BOTS, and the addition of Rylan and AJ was good. Other stuff Iâve already mentioned throughout ,it was also interesting to see them go back to Vote to Evict. Having 3 minimum nominees and the changing ways of the save and or replace from week to week was well done also, as well as using the Safe house a few different ways past that initial fake eviction a few weeks more was also interesting.
Bit on the Psych was ok, although it was more a concentrated version of some of the segments they already still had during the week. Rylanâs Sunday was probably the closest thing weâve had in a while since maybe OkTV to the BBLB afternoon/evening feel and there were some good musical guests.
I think this season could be split into perhaps about 3 acts, Iâd probably put the first as Peoples Puppet to the Safe House double fake eviction/Wolfyâs Eviction in Weekâs 3 and 4, Then Week 5 with Daleyâs Ejection to Week 6 with Danâs exit brought another bit of a shift, Weeks 7-9 the home run.
Housemates Part A
Sallie: she was chaotic, in a way it was a very tough combo of choices who was up first , otherwise we wouldâve had Gina or Dexter out first, although would Sallie have ended up having a similar arc to Gina or she perhaps wouldâve been out still in the following few weeks. After the show sheâs had some further wacky appearances such on the plastic surgery show botched and had to pay back an overpayment of benefits or something. She had some funny one liner moments such as her attempted takedown of Dexter and the spat with Gina (Primark shoes).
Michael: did a good job with that first twist, on one hand like I mentioned it perhaps could have gone a little further, but on the other it was good also for it to have done its job for instant effect in the opening week and then left the house to develop a bit more organically from there. They were pretty much onto him anyway and I did see an article from 2019 where he said he declined to extend his stay because heâs had enough and the house dynamic was starting to get to him a little bit as well. Looks like he continued acting in theatre roles.
Jemima: She started out alright but got a little sidelined with the assumption she was creeping on Sam and then Jackie Travers coming in and kinda stealing her thunder as an older parental/big sister role in the house. And then of course she had a few arguments that spiralled a bit like the big blow up with Dan and Jackie that went against her a bit. Since she left she had a bit of a twitter war with Sallie, and has continued doing work for animal charity.
Wolfy: Also had a bit of a rollercoaster run with the public where she started out appreciated for her kookiness but then she got emotional and bowled over by the Michael task and also Danâs interrogations which she felt were on the bullying side, that made her flip to the âim gonna win thisâ mode which came off as overconfidence to the outside.
A big branching moment was her eviction, and indeed the safe house vote, she couldâve been gone then potentially if that had been a normal eviction, or how would she and Dan have got on if they were voted into the safe house. Then the following week if Dexter and Gina had played the long game they couldâve saved her, or she may have gotten through by the skin of her teeth over Hazel, which would have most likely meant the Daley ejection wouldnât have happened since he and Hazel wouldnât have then been voted into the safe house. Anyway, after the show she was trying to get into stand up comedy apparently but otherwise went back to uni to finish her degree it seems.
Daley: He clearly had brought some of his baggage from the outside into the house, it was a little hard to follow at first what was going on with him keeping to himself a little bit, and then it started going down the road with Hazel seemingly out of nowhere which just spiralled with a bit of game manipulation into the recipe that culminated in the Safe house incident debacle. It wouldâve been interesting to see if he was able to pull it back in the later weeks if Hazel went before him or they werenât forced together in that safe house vote but thats the way it all came to a head. After the show he went back to boxing and became a personal trainer.
Jackie Travers: She was fun, Rylan certainly got a lot of mileage out of her dancing VT. Her turning point seemed to be protecting Charlie and cleaning up her faux pas, also the wrist injury dampened her for a little bit, and She seemed to get hung up on the Audition footage of Callum and his Mother/Daughter story (which I think she got the wrong impression of even if it were true, the way he said it was as if he only found out after the fact they were related and didnât purposely set out to do both of them for the bragging of it kinda thing but anyways). She also thought he came off angry or something.
Anyhow after the show it looks like she continued doing her dancing thing as well as being a property manager and tour manager, even releasing a single called âSt Tropez a few years ago in 2022 (which kinda gives me vibes of ABBAâs âDance (while the music still goes on) in its melody).
Dan: He was one of the most paranoid housemates when it came to the Secrets and Lies, using his detective background to try and work things out. The Unsafe house week was his undoing, Sam and Sophie may have also benefitted in that vote from it flipping back to being a vote to evict season until the finale at that point. Dan leaving kindof cascaded the seniority role in the house down to Callum who then left the week after and it kindof felt like it kicked off the home stretch of the season.
He seemed to have some issues with being viewed as stereotypically bitchy, and in a bit of a surprise pairing not long after the season, he began dating none other than Rylan, breaking up with his bf and He and Rylan got married in November 2015, lasting six years before they had a bit of a messy parting of ways it seems. Some may say Dan was a bit of a fame chaser in that regard maybe? The two of them even did a co-host segment of This Morning in 2016.
Callum: He was kinda a peripheral character towards the beginning but then got on the outer especially with Jackie and Charlie when the audition packages were revealed, which then led to the triangle that wasnât with Dexter involved as well as copping it for coming across as try hard and too awkwardly nice. I do think he benefitted from the number of nominees being expanded in Week 5 whether that was partly due to Daleyâs ejection meaning no save and replace for Hazel that week and it may have been him going instead of Jackie in a lineup against Gina and Dexter. He also was one of the ones who were close with Sam in the bromance dept. The Sun where are they now article mentions he did become a teacher after all not long after the show in 2014.
Hazel: She was another one like Callum that seemed to cop the bad end of the Audition tapes being viewed. She opened pretty well, and was forming a power team it seemed with Dan in the house, then she moved away from him once he was nominated for the fake double eviction and Daley opened up a can of worms by giving her mixed signals about his relationship status and that went south of course with the safe house incident in week 5. She kinda bounced back from that but again some of the public still side eyed her through Week 6 and 7, culminating in not giving a shit anymore by week 8 and having the tit for tat with Gina (in which Gina also regressed a little bit). She handled herself well though in the post interviews, and after the show later became a WAG with 2 kids.
Sophie: She was a little bit background at first as well, but came up by the end a bit more to the forefront, by her involvement with whatever the rivalry with Sam she had was, her friendship with the twins, and several tasks and twists like the body cam, the safe house twist and the last of which was Dexter swapping with her which saw her evicted just before the finale. She kindof reminded me also with her accent and cadence of like a female Chris from last season a little bit. After the show she returned to her work and kept a low profile it seems but has also done some charity stuff.
Charlie: She seemed to have a habit of saying the wrong thing and causing a stir, also not having much self confidence in herself at times, especially with the triangle dross with Callum and Dexter, and even after Jackie left (although initially she let her hair down with the Nutella and Hazel). After the show she did continue seeing Dexter but it fizzled out after a few months apparently and she went to LA and became a presenter and also has a podcast.
Jack & Joe: Another set of twins makes the finale, although they had their fair share more bickering between them than some of the sets of twins weâve seen so far. They also had a little bit more distinct personalities in some ways, and some different interpersonal relationships, friendships and dialogue with some of the others. Afterwards, they ran the London Marathon in 2019 and did a BB podcast for the 2023 Season BBUK20.
Gina: Gina was another iconic housemate who could have gone the first week, but also made quite the public perception turnaround after having a stoush on her first night with Sallie, to giving the tasks a good crack and learning about the other housemates backgrounds and such. She did kinda regress a little with the whole bickering session with Hazel and her rivalry with her in Week 8, however, she provided many other funny moments and in a way reminded some a little of like a shade of Nikki Grahame in BB7 in her own way.
After the show she split with EckSell, and is now a philanthropist, designer and Vlogger, also having appeared on Channel 5âs series about The Savoy Hotel. She also has taught fashion.
Dexter: Was another very interesting character, he had a bit of a redemption arc happening in the beginning with his wanting to be liked and turn public perception of him around a bit. The stuff with Charlie got a bit stale by the end though, going from trying to butter up Hazel and when that didnât work out, declaring his feelings for Charlie after Callum was starting to come on the bad side of Jackie just came off a bit bizarre, especially with having a supposed gf on the outside.
He contrasted that to Daleyâs predicament by saying it was only a new relationship and he had a hall pass, however after appearing on the show very early on, His gf wasnât talked about by the end. Although it did suck up some of his airtime and story focus by the end in the back half and it mightâve been interesting for Charlie to go earlier, but the triangle at least gave us a bit of conflict with Callum, and he otherwise had some fun moments with Gina in the Safe house and some of the tasks and twists.
Afterwards it seems he had a bit of a tough time but later married and had a son with a fan (Maybe a bit like that fake letter Gina wrote him hey). And also seems to be in business and tech.
Sam: He got not much visibility in the edit near the beginning, his main storyline seemed to be if Jemima was gonna make a move on him or not, then once she left, he became a sounding board for some of the others gossip sessions about the tensions in the house. He felt Daleyâs sudden departure, and also had a bit of a rivalry with Sophie where for some reason they just didnât gel (although for a brief moment they looked like they were amicable in the safe house, which really thrust them into the spotlight by way of the twist.
Coming off that, he stuck with Callum as a close mate, and had a few moments of standing up and having a go at expressing his opinions (even though he felt fear of doing so if he hadnât heard the full story or misread the situation). Dexter and Gina carried the season at the forefront yes (I had heard of their names being thrown around before I watched this season and knew that Sam won) and He may have been more under the radar, but on the other hand he was a lovable cheeky chap and it was nice to see him get the win at the same time.
Speaking currently of Vinnie in BBAU being on Deal or No Deal, Sam was also on the UK show the year before he was on BB. Afterwards he apparently launched a dating website for deaf people, taught celebrities the Welsh language and done a lot of charity work.
Thatâll do for now on BB14, up next an opening post for CBB12.
