The Celebrity Circle: blockbuster TV on a par with early Big Brother

Channel 4 already knows that The Circle is an incredible TV format. The problem is that not quite enough of the rest of us have realised that yet. That’s why C4 has folded the show (briefly: a group of people in a block of Instagram-neat apartments compete to be liked via a clunky in-house social media app; they can either be their boring selves or someone more interesting; there is absolutely no benefit to pretending to be someone else, only the constant risk of being found out; for some reason this medium inspires a lot of very bizarre flirting) into its annual Stand Up to Cancer output, because here is a worthy platform for blockbuster reality telly on a par with the Big Brother of yore.

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So to The Celebrity Circle (Tuesday, 9.15pm, Channel 4), a short, trial-sized series of The Circle set to run before this year’s actual series of The Circle. The show has been cast, as per tradition, by throwing a dart at Britain’s hallowed “Who Will Do Absolutely Anything?” board, so we have all the hits: Loose Women Nadia Sawalha and Kaye Adams, teaming up to pretend to be Gemma Collins; Duncan James from Blue, who at this point you have to assume just hangs around outside television studios, hoping there’s a gameshow in need of a ringer; Denise van Outen, fresh from her stint on Celebrity Gogglebox and “every celeb-adjacent TV show filmed in the past 25 years”, plays as Denise van Outen, while Radio 1’s Rickie & Melvin play a fascinatingly unconvincing Will.i.am.

There is a little intrigue this year with the addition of Baga Chipz, the Drag Race UK graduate, who turns out to be an incredibly astute scholar of the game (playing as Kim Woodburn), and the blossoming structured-reality double act Pete Wicks (Towie) and Sam Thompson (Made in Chelsea), a classic po-faced goth/excitable puppy duo who compete as Rachel Riley, for some reason, and amuse themselves by bickering and playing Jenga. Much as I want to hate the two of them – I feel as if their tag-teamed TV appearances are being forced upon me, the same way the music industry made me aware of who Jess Glynne was, despite me never wanting to know – I must begrudgingly admit that, actually, they are good.

Fans of The Circle proper will know that it is not really about the early stage episodes. The show really gets going when a few more layers of trust and distrust have been achieved; when the original lineup has been clipped of a few members; when relationships have flared up and fizzled out, like that bit in last year’s (supposedly non-celebrity) series when Richard Madeley flirted with Fatboy Slim’s son by shouting very slowly at a television.

I think it’s important to note that this Celebrity edition brings an extra layer of dazzle, given that a lot of these people have already intimately schmoozed with each other at various West End afterparties, so know how they text and talk (“That’s definitely Denise. She always calls me ‘Duncs’,” deduces Duncan “Sherlock” James). As a result, it threatens to be messier and more backstabby than ever. Listen, unless you haven’t noticed, we’re all locked indoors. We may as well watch people have fun while doing the same.