Channel Six’s new reality TV show, The Great British Porn Challenge is proving to be the latest viewing phenomenon to grip the British public, generating some the digital channel’s highest ever viewing figures. “We always thought that it would be a winner,” says Channel Six programme director Brian Numpty. “But we never could have dreamed of the level of success it has achieved.” The show, which features amateur porn makers competing for the title of ‘British Pornographer-in-Chief’ over thirteen weeks, has been favourably compared, by both critics and viewers, to programmes such as The Great British Bake Off. Numpty freely admits that Bake Off was a big inspiration for his channel’s show. “Like Bake Off, we wanted to take a British tradition which had fallen into abeyance and both resurrect and celebrate it in an entertainment format that involved the participation of the general viewing public,” he explains. “So what better subject matter than pornography? Just like baking, we used to be good it in the seventies, but have since allowed our once great porn industry to fall into disrepair. When was the last time you saw a decent British made smut movie?”
Like Bake Off, the Great British Porn Challenge aims to revive traditional skills which are in danger of being forgotten. “The advent of cheap video cameras, then the internet, meant that anyone could shoot a porno and distribute it globally,” muses Numpty. “But the quality suffered – have you seen how poorly lit and shot those videos are? I mean, there is no proper shot framing to speak of, awful sound and as for the editing, it might as well have been done with a hammer and chisel. Don’t get me started on the dialogue, for God’s sake! Even the sex itself ids poorly delivered, with no class or imagination! These were the qualities we wanted to encourage with our show.” Numpty makes clear that, from the outset, a decision was made that the show would only deal in softcore pornography. “While it was always intended to be scheduled in a late night slot, we still didn’t want to alienate potential viewers,” he says. “So we decided that there would be no penetration shots, no ejaculations flying around and no erect penises. We were always confident that full frontal nudity, in itself, wouldn’t put viewers off – after all, Channel Four had already shown with Naked Attraction that you could get away with thrusting both male and female genitalia in viewers’ faces just after the watershed.”
The format of the show is straightforward, pitting teams of film makers against each other to make adult movies. Each week they are challenged to make a twenty minute pornographic film on a different theme: sex comedy, Gothic horror porno, period smut, for instance. The big gimmick is that they have to start from scratch each week, using only the resources at hand – no studios or professional performers. Instead, they have to find grotty flats and suburban houses to shoot in and try and persuade people off of the street to perform for them. “We wanted to recreate the sort of experience that they would have had in the nineteen seventies as low budget adult film makers,” says Numpty. “We wanted to give them the opportunity to show their initiative when it came to finding locations, props and costumes. Not to mention special effects – our science fiction themed episode saw some of the teams doing some ingenious stuff with tin foil, wire coat hangers and empty washing up liquid bottles in order to create space ships. A highlight of that episode was when one team had a narrow escape when they were nearly caught stealing some car hub caps in order to emulate the flying saucers in Plan Nine From Outer Space. But that’s all part of the fun!”
Indeed, the ingenuity shown by the teams has been key to the series success with viewers. “We had a huge reaction to the sex comedy episode where one team persuaded a housewife not only to allow them to use her house as a location, but also star in their film,” chuckles Numpty. “They had to get the whole thing filmed before her husband got home. When he unexpectedly came home early, they thought on their feet and incorporated it into their film, with the crew hiding in the wardrobe, continuing to film as the startled male actor – actually the local post man – leapt out of bed and tried to climb down the drain pipe, naked, as he heard the husband coming up the stairs. It made for electrifying viewing!” Numpty’s favourite round so far was their ‘low tech’ challenge, where the teams were denied even proper cameras. “We forced them to shoot it all on their mobile phones, with lighting rigs improvised from desk lamps and the like,” he recalls. “They weren’t even allowed to use professionally manufactured sex toys – it all had to be improvised with vegetables and such like. One team did a whole bondage scene in a makeshift dungeon using hat racks, kitchen utensils and a whip made from a mop. Bloody brilliant!”
Numpty is currently looking forward to the programme’s Halloween edition. “I think we’ll be seeing lots of shagging in cemetaries under cover of darkness, not to mention unspeakable things being done to pumpkins,” he says. “I’m very much hoping that we’ll see at least one of the teams try and improvise a Black Mass, with lots of naked acolytes dancing around and trying to summon up the devil. Perhaps they could try involving their local branch of the Chrurch of Satan. Although they’d have to be careful that the Satanists didn’t engage in any real initiations by buggery or frenzied sex orgies, as this would contravene our rules on simulated sex only.” One team has already been disqualified for breaching the no hardcore rule, when the judges ruled, upon seeing their completed film, that actual penetration had taken place. The move proved controversial with viewers, with the judges, former porn performer Norma Stitz and fabled adult director Rod Walloper, facing a fierce social media backlash. “I know that they were fan favourites and hotly tipped to win the series, but the judges are adamant that actual penetrative sex took place,” says Numpty. “Their experience told them that the female participant in the scene most definitely wasn’t faking her orgasm and that her screams could only be the result of an actual penis entering her.” The controversy has only served to boost interest in the programme further, with a second series already commissioned.
