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Telegraph - What’s worse: fake Austen or real Big Brother? By Michael Deacon

If today’s audiences are as obsessed with costume dramas as television commissioners are, it’s with good reason. As a subject for television, the past is often a lot more palatable than the present.

In their sentimentality and staginess, costume dramas may sometimes paint an absurdly false picture of history, and indeed of the novels they’re adapted from; but better a false picture of the past than the true picture of the present offered by reality television.

Big Brother and the innumerable talent shows that clog the schedules drag us into a nightmare peopled by wannabes and bullies. Costume dramas invite us into a heaven peopled by immaculate gentry and lovable yokels.

If it’s an adaptation of Austen, everyone’s manners are as beautiful as the country houses; if it’s an adaptation of Dickens, even the most feral villain looks as harmless as Billy Bunter next to the species of screeching delinquent found year upon year in the Big Brother household.

Heh.