Shocking our Russian brothers

The show has been a big hit with the young

By Kim Palchikoff

Russia's version of TV show Big Brother is getting sexier, and some say sleazier, by the minute.

With only days to go until the winning couple is announced on 1 December, the former Soviet Union's first reality TV show Za Steklom (Behind the Glass) has millions of Russian speakers around the globe abuzz.

Russians are very emotional and need participants they can relate to

Anastasia Perova, producer

Many say the highly controversial programme has turned into live porn, as participants' behaviour becomes increasingly sexually explicit.

But it's popularity among youth has caused an international sensation.

The TV show, which films young people sequestered for 34 days in an apartment, is also broadcast 24 hours a day on the net.

Highlights

Producers say that more than 13.5 million Russian speakers have logged on to their website in slightly more than three weeks, and at any given time, some 50,000 are online watching the events or chatting.

A video cassette with the still-unfolding show's highlights is already on sale. National media carries daily updates of the show's highlights.

"Russians are very outwardly emotional and need participants they can relate to, that they can love, hate, argue about or cry with," said Anastasia Perova, one of the show's producers.

Weekly votes eliminate one housemate at a time

"They would never put up with a Western version [of Big Brother]."

She said the six original participants had been carefully selected from a group of 50,000 by the show's producers, sociologists, psychologists and doctors - and that a lack of sexual inhibition was one of their requirements.

Each week, the public votes to eliminate their least favourite participant.

One-way mirrors

In addition to their round-the-clock coverage, the show is aired three times daily on Russia TV 6.

Their apartment, located in an apartment on a hotel in Red Square, is outfitted with multiple cameras and one-way mirrored walls.

Even Russians abroad are getting in on the discussion

Sergey Shestakov, NTV International

Everything, from showers and toilets, to make ups and break ups, is on public display while the participants live together.

Throughout the day, they are given special, "assignments" - like drama sketches - which are supposed to make their lives more interesting.

Flamboyant

But if foreign Big Brothers focuses more on conversations, the Russian version has added its own national obsession for passion and drama, and the close-quartered relationships have quickly turned sexual.

The prize is a flat worth nearly £20,000

This week, in a long-awaited development, two of the show's most flamboyant participants, Margo, 22, and Max, 21, ended up in an overnight marathon session of sexual intercourse displayed live on the internet until 0400.

The following day their performance was a matter of major public discussion.

Even the prize - a flat worth $27,500 (£19,500) for the most popular couple versus cash for an individual - was an incentive to make things turn hot.

Psychologists

But Perova denied reports in the Russian press that Za Steklom had got out of control, and that the young participants vying for the flat would be psychologically damaged once they emerged to find how popular they had become.

"We have on-site psychologists," she said.

"Plus they have regular contact with the show's main producer."

"Even Russians abroad are getting in on the discussion," said Sergey Shestakov, executive vice-president for NTV International, a privately-owned Russian global satellite and cable television company.

His New York office call centre receives more calls about the show than any other, it says.

But Shestakov, a supporter of the show, says as a viewer he sees it more as a psychological and sociological study of naturally occurring chemistry between young people living together, rather than watching a faked effort to win an apartment.

Viewers outside the former Soviet Union, he says, are less critical than Russians back home, who have not been exposed to as much sex on TV as those living abroad.

And business is going so well, says Perova, that they are planning a second show to follow within two to four weeks after the first one.