Come on, get real!

The success of a programme like The Late Late Show, going strong for thirty-something years, is partly due to the weekly promise of some revealing insight you might get into yet another famous person. In reality, of course, the insight we get is carefully prepared and controlled. Then, sometimes completely non-famous people appear to give us some startling insight. We recently had three sexy bachelors up telling us all about the mating game in the Nineties, for instance. But ultimately it's all quite polite.

Being live, Irish chat shows do have a certain spontaneity. But the tendency with the growing chat show industry in America is to move away from more scripted discussion with famous people and towards a sort of free-for-all fight involving your average unknown couple (unknown before they went on the show anyway) willing to argue over the most intimate details of their lives in front of millions of viewers. So we get the likes of Wanda and Butch discussing Wanda's desire to date Butch's mother. The various audience members contribute in a range of animated ways, from plain old screaming to boxing one another in the face. Incredible, but true. Best known for real live punch-ups is The Jerry Springer Show. After several bloody years on air, by early this year the show was so heavily criticised that last May its producers were compelled to vow to eliminate all violence. However, ratings declined, and by the end of July Springer admitted that the chair-throwing brawls which transformed the programme into a national phenomenon were creeping back.

The show's team has since been busy deciding what is acceptable violence: fine tuning on the tough issues of hair pulling and "earlobe touching" is ongoing.

At the end of the day it will depend on the fans, it seems; "we're in the business of providing entertainment to people," says Springer.

Entertainment like this: last week Springer hosted three heterosexual couples who were having problems because the man wouldn't "commit". The first couple were the beautiful blonde June and her boyfriend, Nick. They had a child together, but he wouldn't marry her. Well, he would marry her, but not yet. Maybe in February. He wasn't sure when. Nick, it seemed, was a bit of a philanderer: on air, his best friend advised June to leave him. The audience joined in. But June sat their smiling at Nick, stroking his hand, assuring him everything was okay, whispering in his ear how much she loved him. As the discussion went on, it seemed Nick had not had any affairs for a few years. He just liked to go to the motel and play guitar with the guys. Then June's sister mentioned in passing that both June and Nick were pathological liars; however, no one picked up on that particular comment - where would it have left us? Basically Nick and June seemed happy to talk about the most intimate details of their very rocky relationship in front of both a live audience and millions of viewers, to no obviously beneficial end. To their left were Fran and Tom, expecting their fourth child. They had been together years, but still he wouldn't marry her. Fran's dad came along to share his disgust with the situation. According to Dad, while Fran was giving birth to one of the kids, Tom was out on the phone talking to his other girlfriend, who was also due to have a baby by him. Dad was beside himself. But Fran and Tom were cool. They were actually split up at that point and it was fine for Tom to be getting another woman pregnant. However, Fran never said a word. She smiled and blushed. She didn't even answer questions put directly to her by Springer. The audience was disgusted with Tom's behaviour and offered him condoms. Then came Julie and Jim. Jim was dating other girls, but not sleeping with them - he said. She was seeing someone else now. If he insisted on seeing other women, they couldn't be together. And next thing they were having a great oul' snog.

it's good to talk

What makes stuff like this so riveting? Perhaps Americans have simply taken the idea "it's good to talk" to the sort of extremes they excel at reaching. Then again, maybe people all over the world share their difficulties and take solace in these fairly incoherent, possibly cathartic, discussions. As with real life, some conversations on the more "real" talk shows are not always entirely comprehensible. But there is an awful lot of real emotion, and emotional titillation is what entertainment is all about. It may be all over the shop, but the audience can relate. Relate TV is in fact the key to this whole new world of entertainment. Of course we can all have empathy for the tragedies visited upon various rich and famous stars, but we almost feel as if we're watching our own problems being enacted and discussed (no, not actually resolved) on a Springer-type show.

Springer is the highest rater, but he is not alone. Ricki Lake, Sally Jesse Raphael, Geraldo Rivera, Jenny Jones and the Queen of them all, Oprah Winfrey, all do a similar sort of thing.

Oprah, however, is special. She doesn't simply harangue her guests, she shares her own problems - her fluctuating weight, her relationships. And she cries too.

But there's nothing like a good battering and at the moment Springer is ahead in the rating wars. So Oprah is going for broke, and daily we get something approaching a mass therapy session. Jan and Steve tell us about the death of their eight-year-old son. The boy's picture is projected on the vast backdrop, behind Oprah and her guest, therapist Phil McGraw. "Letting him go and saying good-bye does not mean you have abandoned him," we are told, and Steve bursts into tears. He tells us how his reaction to his son's death took its toll on his marriage, and if it weren't for Phil, he doesn't know where he'd be today.

Quick break for a "Remembering Your Spirit" slot. The Reverend Cecil Williams walks towards his altar past a banner proclaiming "Spirituality is Loving People", and delivers a powerful sermon. Then back to Oprah, and up on stage she has a guest who has still not come to terms with the loss of her daughter several years earlier. Oprah and Phil hold her. The tears pour. She admits she was contemplating suicide but now, with the assistance of Phil, Oprah and the audience, she has found the strength to go on. "A lot has happened to you in this hour," Oprah comments.

Over on Jenny Jones a reformed drug addict and mother of two is telling us about being kidnapped, held for six weeks and raped. To thunderous applause she says she is now in recovery and "having major psychotherapy".

Ricki Lake is doing a sort of excrutiatingly embarrassing "Blind Date" number. People who haven't seen their ex-partners for years talk about how they still adore them and want to get back with them. Then the ex's are each wheeled out, and every last one of them balks at the idea of a reunion. As you can imagine, this was probably the saddest and most humiliating show of the lot.

talk as therapy

These talk shows throw up all sorts of questions about the role of television in our increasingly fragmented and isolating societies. Perhaps they fill a void once filled by the support of the community. Perhaps they are indicative of a world in which the rules and regulations are increasingly unclear and confusion is endemic. Maybe we really do believe that any amount of talking will just about solve every woe in the world.

Or maybe we just love other people's misery . . .