Review: Game of Clones

Somewhere in the churning cogs of Channel 4, someone who clearly hasn’t had a date in twenty years sat down and created Game of Clones. “You know what would be great, and not at all morally questionable?!” they pitched to E4; “A show where you can engineer the perfect date and be provided with eight identical clones of them to choose from – wouldn’t that be stellar!”

Appealing to the vapid Naked Attraction/Take Me Out crown, the show has a single ‘Dater’ graphic design their perfect partner Sims-style, allowing for their preferences on weight, height, hair colour, skin tone, leg length, ab-firmness, breast size… the list goes on. Channel 4 then kindly goes out and finds eight men or women matching these oh-so-carefully picked criteria, based, of course, entirely on physical appearance.

Naturally, every week of shows comes with a selection of eight leggy-breasty-blondes or ripped-bearded-man-bun-bearing hunks, who have presumably been bribed with just enough money to give up their dignity and self-respect. As the show ensues, the women appear in a range of low cut, short dresses and the men rip off their excessively tight t-shirts, to show off ‘talents’ at about the level of beauty-pageant baton twirling.

The victims of this demonstration of consumer culture sit and listen to the ‘Dater’ detail what aspects of their personality (*cough* body *cough*) they prefer. Adding to the tragic nature of the show, the meat-market sit around a table adorably holding hands and offering support to their fellow casualties of materialism, waiting and hoping not to get a text (yes, a text) from their beau, that may or may not end their mediocre attempt at reality television fame.

Once called into the decision room, the ever-loving dater generously donates them one more chance to convince them why they should consider them worthy of a date with them (power mad much?). They eventually decide that perhaps Charlotte/John is a little too fake for them – the person who used a computer programme to design a human.

We have to ask – why, at no point, did Channel 4 think that perhaps this was a little morally underhand? Their moral compass certainly seems to be slightly off-centre. They have created a reality TV show where contestants are picked for entirely aesthetic reasons, try depressingly hard to look better than seven other ‘identical’ people, and are inevitably voted off because they don’t quite meet the criteria of the digitally created clone. How could they have possibly have thought that this show would be a success? Or perhaps they realised that there seems to be, sadly, a huge market for image-obsessed reality television, in which body-shaming and shallow aestheticism are the only features.

Let’s be honest, Game of Clones would be better off following the path of its namesake Game of Thrones. E4 should kill off this show before it has time to damage our young viewers for life.

Game of Clones airs on E4, weekdays at 7.30pm.