Screen-test nerves for village

What they are appearing in is not some fictional portrait of rural life such as Heartbeat whose comforting, rose-tinted pictures have done so much to swell tourism’s coffers. This one is called Love Thy Neighbour and those feeling anxious may detect a sense or irony at play here by the metropolitan film-makers who have put the show together.

It’s not a re-make of the 1970s’ sitcom but a ‘reality’ show crossed with a game show.

Two other villages were approached first to take part, Aberdour, in Scotland, and Kettlethorpe, in Lincolnshire. Both kicked the London production company firmly into touch, suspecting they might be portrayed unfavorably.

But Grassington Parish Council got behind the idea. The main advantage they saw was economic. In common with many other rural communities, Grassington suffered from the ravages of foot-and-mouth disease and today it relies more than ever on the money that tourism brings in.

Passing up the opportunity of several weeks of primetime TV to showcase Grassington’s charms might have been considered foolhardy.

But this spirit of commercial realism ran up against a mistrust of the TV production company’s motives, and this was expressed at public meetings.

The idea for the show is to have a dozen couples and families take it in turns to come into Grassington for a trial period to take on jobs and tasks and generally try to fit into the community.

The family that tops a residents’ poll wins a £300,000 detached house in the village where they must agree to live for a minimum of three years.

This prize is an issue in itself, given the difficulty young local people have in getting on to the housing ladder. The gap between average earnings and average house prices here is greater than 13 to one.

Dominic (Dom) Tuck came back to Grassington, where he was born and brought up, eight years ago.

“One of the biggest issues of why people were against it was that a lot of people like myself cannot afford to get on to the housing market,” he says.

“I’d never be able to afford to buy my own house here. I was one of those who was against the series. I knew it would split the village down the middle and that it could end up being World War III here.

“I think the parish council thought it would be good to take it on for the tourism, particularly with the present state of the economy and to bring more money into the village. There were one or two people who did make life difficult for the film crew.”

We did request to see a preview of the first of the programmes from the film-makers and Channel 4, but none has been forthcoming.

Sandra Smithson, another villager who had initial misgivings about it, said: “I thought it was going to be like Big Brother but after a couple of meetings at the Town Hall with the producers I felt the production company came across really well.

“I’m good at playing devil’s advocate, so I came out with the words ‘what if you make us look like fools?’ to test them.”

The show’s contestants include the archetypal TV types reckoned to make ‘good television’ – a gay couple, a lesbian couple, a black couple, an Asian couple and single mothers, as well as a cross-dressing husband. He threw a party where the locals were invited to come cross-dressed. No-one turned up.

“The thing is we’ve already got one of them in the village any way,” says Sandra. “And we have gay couples here and black people, and Asians.

“We don’t see the colour or race or people’s persuasion, we just see the people. Our worry is that the way the series will be edited might try to show us as a backward, unpleasant society but we’re not at all.

“This village is very modern in many ways, even though the buildings give it an old-fashioned façade.”

The aim of each contestant is to win over the hearts of the villagers, and each week two couples go head-to-head. The villagers decide who is knocked out by voting in the Town Hall polling station.

Some contestants canvassed the electorate harder than others. “They all had free rein to try to get our votes,’ says Sandra.

“One or two didn’t go down at all well. One gentleman’s wife had a PhD in psychology and said she was going to sort us all out. That didn’t help.

“A half-German lady came into our knit-stitch and natter group, otherwise known as ‘witch, stitch and bitch’, and told us she was going to teach us to knit the German way.

“An Italian family rushed around stopping cars to tell people they had to vote for them. And one couple had obnoxious children.”

Dom’s heart was bruised in the process by one of the female contestants. “I thought she was a really nice girl,” says Dom.

“She is very attractive and it’s sometimes difficult to find someone you really like in a small place. I did a lot of persuading people to vote for her and I was taken hook, line and sinker. She led me on.”

So will it be commercial winner for the village or a community disaster?

It doesn’t sound as though Grassington has too much to worry about.

Love Thy Neighbour starts on Channel 4, 9pm, on Thursday.