Bbus
All of that is true, but to explain the difference in rules doesn't begin to explain. It is very full of drama, lying,backstabbing, and paranoia. Imagine the intensity of "The Big Sting" every week. And if the housema.....um house guests don't create enough drama on their own, BB apparently creates some in diary room sessions which are seldom heard.
I am no expert, have only watched two seasons, but the US show is very dark, shows the houseguests at the worst. Talking about strategy is allowed, and considering there are no weekly tasks, that is pretty much all they do is talk strategy. Lots of whispering, and private conversations. The bullying and whinging (haha I said whinging) on BBAUS is nothing. Although my favorites are gone from BB08, I don't really hate any of the remaining housemates. Halfway through the US season I really do hate at least half the HG's, and take perverse pleasure in seeing some of them have total meltdowns.
Some of the competitions are pretty cool. In a recent one, six houseguests crawl through honey jump onto a giant bed and rip open a feather pillow (so you are covered with honey and now feathers are all over and soon you are covered with feathers as well as honey) to get a stuffed bear, crawl back through the honey and place the bear in a jar. The first one to do this five times won the "Power of Veto", a weekly thing.
Some competitions are physical endurance and some are just Q&A and dumb luck. It should be good to win HOH competition....HOH nominates two for eviction, but that often puts a target on you next week....you've just made two enemies and one or both will stay.
Strategy is very confusing. There are alliances like the Evil Black Crows and 3 Blonde Mice, and then secret sub-alliances, for example Nobbi would have a deal with Cherry, Alice thinks she has a secret alliance with Rory, but he really has a pact with Bridget. It is very confusing and the way to get to the end is to make promises to several then stab most of them in the back.
The sequester house is the oddest strategy of all. Seven evicted house guests make up a jury which selects a winner from the final two. To get to the final two you have probably lied to most of the jury, and perhaps voted them out.
The weekly eviction show is live, but the other two weekly shows are taped and usually biased for and against certain houseguests. Much of the real action happens on the 24/7 live feeds (which are often turned off for minutes or hours) and the daily three hour cable show, After Dark. For me, that was the addictive part....most of the time on the feeds it is sort of Warholish, they sit around doing nothing, but you never know when something major is going to happen so you are find yourself watching constantly.
The US show is very dark....I started watching BBAUS this year, saw the Kombi van and the dinner lottery and laughed my butt off. Put it on a dvd and showed it to a BBUS fan at work, told her "I don't know what this is, but its pretty funny", and we have been watching ever since. I really like the Australian show a lot better, I guess next year I will watch UK.
I have no idea why I wrote all of this.
its basically survivor but live, so no viewer votig evictions, they are allowed to discuss nominations, form alliances, basically once a week there is a Head of house competition, the winner gets a rewards room and must put two people up for eviction, then later that week there is a Veto competition where the people up for eviction and i think 4 others cmpete for the chanceto either change nominations or keep them the same, if a nominee wins the Veto comp they can take themselves off and HOH must put someone else up, if either HOH or a HM wins it they can take someone off or leave it as is but run th risk of being put up. At the end of the week the HMs all vote (apart from HOH and nominees) and the one with the higest votes is evicted, from memory if its a tie HOH decides, the next week the HOH winner cannot compete for HOH.
About half way through evicted HMs are put in to isloation known as saquester (spelling?) where they cannot watch whats happening, then eac time someone is evicted they go there with a DVD of how it went down, at the end of the season the SQ house vote for the winner.
So they get HOH Show, Veto Show and Eviction Show per week, they offer live feeds via the web and i think it offers multiple camera views, ohh and each week they compete for food, if they win they win the food they played for, if they lose they are on slop for the week.
During the season they have some twists and generally the HOH, Food comp and Veto cometitions are quite good, alot like FNL type things, usually physical.
sucks.