What are we doing?

Channel hopping last night I found the strangest programme on one of the more obscure sky twilight channels.

Celebrity Rehab has to be seen to be believed:and its format couldn't be simpler or more exploitative. A score of "celebrities" with drug and alcohol problems are checked into a therapeutic care centre under the "no nonsense" care of handsome Dr Drew. Psychotherapy sessions are filmed, demons are exposed and wrecked human beings are seen at their lowest ebb.

Ok I guess it is a more showy version of Big Brother, but I found the whole sorry programme immensely sad and at the same time strangely fascinating.By the end of an hours viewing, my overall emotion was anger. Anger that several vulnerable individuals had quite obviously been manipulated into "spilling their guts out for the cameras"

My heart went out to actor Jeff Conaway who was physically the most debilitated and emotionally fragile of the group, and the scenes with him gaining crumbs of support from the crumpled faced Brigitte Nielsen, (who was strangely balanced yet rather resigned at her predicament), were particularly moving.

Why do we need to watch this sort of thing on tv? Why does the audience require bigger and better reality fodder.

The merits of watching people battle addictions might help some sufferers with their resolve or denial but the parading of these fallen well knowns was I feel in very poor taste and smacked totally of voyeurism.