Judy

BH has become something of a fan of Judge Judy, who has managed to knock 'Neighbours' off the late afternoon ironing slot.

She got very cross with me when I explained that my understanding was that, while the cases presented were probably real enough, the show as a whole was a creation. Maybe not a scripted performance, maybe not even rehearsed, but certainly managed. I believe, for example, that the studio audience is paid. Are there auditions and screen tests for prospective litigants? One can see that from the point of view of the producer of the show, there maybe ought to be. I find the whole fake-real ambience of shows like this (I am told that our own 'Antiques Roadshow', for example, is managed in much the same way) rather distasteful, preferring to keep my fact and fiction reasonably separate. BH and I have to agree to differ.

But yesterday, I had rather a different thought. That it was rather distasteful that a very rich woman should make herself even richer by shouting at very poor men and women on television. The strange fact that they volunteer to be humiliated in this way does not go very far to excuse her.

PS: one might argue in Judy's defence that justice is a show. A performance put on for the jury and for those of us who care to see justice being done. A performance put on by lawyers who share many tricks of the trade with the luvvies. So what is so terrible about being up front about it? Answer: there is a big difference between putting on a show in order to make money and there being a show as a by-product of making justice.