French farmers threaten TV series

La Ferme Celebrites is based upon US reality series The Farm

Farmers have threatened legal action against a popular French reality show unless it comes off the air this week.

La Ferme Celebrites - Celebrity Farm - sees 14 French celebrities live in a farmhouse for 70 days without running water or electricity.

Tasks include sheep shearing, milking cows and tending as animals give birth.

But the show, which attracts eight million viewers, has infuriated the Farmers' Confederation, who consider the show "degrading" to rural people.

Based on the hit US programme The Farm, the series is set in a purpose-built farmhouse in the south of France's Vaucluse region.

This show is an outrage to our country's noble rural tradition Jean-Emile Sanchez Farmers' Confederation

Contestants include 1970s television presenter Daniele Gilbert, stand-up comic Mouss Diouf and model Celine Balitran, a former partner of actor George Clooney.

French broadcaster TF1 says the show "plays on the contrasts of individualist urban celebrities used to every comfort being forced to live a collective experience immersed in an archaic rural environment".

Challenge

But Farmers' Confederation spokesman Jean-Emile Sanchez said: "This show is an outrage to our country's noble rural tradition."

"It is unacceptable that such a masquerade, a mockery, a media circus can be allowed to play with the dignity of the rural community."

Backed by the Association of Rural Mayors and the Society for the Protection of Animals, the group plans to take legal action if La Ferme Celebrites remains on air after Thursday.

It says it will challenge the programme-makers' legal right to have built the farmhouse for the series. TF1 says full planning permission was granted before filming began.