Nasty, pointless, boring... this was torture TV on the cheap: Christopher Stevens reviews last night's TV

By Christopher Stevens Reviews Last Night's Tv

Published: 01:56 GMT, 29 August 2017 | Updated: 13:17 GMT, 29 August 2017

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In Solitary: The Anti-Social Experiment (C5)

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Dangerous Borders: A Journey Across India And Pakistan (BBC2)

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Greta Garbo, moody superstar of the silent screen, would have enjoyed this game. ‘I vant to be arr-lone,’ she liked to boom in her deep Swedish accent, and spent her last 40 years as the world’s most famous recluse.

In Solitary: The Anti-Social Experiment (C5) gave four of today’s social media addicts the Garbo treatment, by locking them in shipping containers for five days with no phone, computer or company.

George Lamb (pictured) only lasted 23 hours in Channel five's InSolitary: The Anti-Social Experiment

This was billed as a unique psychological investigation, but it was just voyeuristic cruelty on camera, a cheapo version of torture shows such as The Island and I’m A Celeb.

The only aim was to see which contestants cracked up. A couple did, and that was just what the producers wanted. It was nasty, and pointless.

These candidates had been chosen for their vulnerability and need for human contact. There were no grumpy Garbos. I’ve worked with newspaper sub-editors who were more solitary than giant pandas: after five days shut in a box, they would order any rescuer to bog off and leave them alone.

It’s baffling that people want to take part in these TV trials. Are they so desperate to be micro-celebrities? One woman, a 36-year-old single mother called Sarah, announced she was taking part to ‘focus on myself a little bit more and reconnect’. Why not do a spa weekend?

Strangest of all was presenter George Lamb’s decision to join the experiment without telling anyone. He only lasted 23 hours, before reaching the limits of his attention span. As he flounced out of the cabin, he snapped: ‘There’s no hairbrush and no mirror!’ Poor dear ... he hadn’t seen the one person he loved most in the world for almost a whole day.

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The cast stayed in shipping containers for five days with no computer, phone or company

None of the contestants took books into their cells. The voiceover didn’t suggest that reading material was forbidden, so this appears to be more proof that many under-40s are now functionally illiterate.

A couple of fat novels would make five days fly by. And if that’s forbidden, why not take a guitar or a monster jigsaw? One woman thought to equip herself with drawing materials, and she easily coped the best.

This one-off programme won’t become a series. If we learned anything, it’s that no one enjoys being bored — and this was very boring TV.

Presenters Adnan Sarwar and Babita Sharma have had no time to be bored as they explored the aftershocks of partition in their three-part series Dangerous Borders: A Journey Across India And Pakistan (BBC2).

The dual travelogue has been something of an overload of sensations in stereo.

As Adnan investigated life in mainly Muslim Pakistan, Babita adventured through the more diverse Indian states.

Babita Sharma (pictured) in BBC2's Dangerous Borders: A Journey Across India And Pakistan adventured through diverse Indian states

The show seemed to be trying to illustrate how different the two countries had become over 70 years, but since everything we saw was outlandish and strange, the point was lost. In Pakistan, close to the Khyber Pass, Adnan discovered a bright blue lake that formed only seven years ago, submerging a village after a landslide. And he met a 90-year-old former freedom fighter, who was once a polo champion.

In India, Babita saw police using slingshots to hurl rocks back at Kashmiri protesters. She visited George Harrison’s favourite retreat, and paid homage to three boulders dressed as goddesses in a mountain cave.

But the two halves of the programme never intersected. The only message was: these two different countries really are two different countries.