If you were teenagers in the 2000s you will probably remember the mountain of reality shows that invaded television and that led to an overdose of content, to a drunkenness so overwhelming that even the coffee would not be able to grind it. From Big Brother all’Island of the Famous passing, then, through The farm, The mole, Music Farm, Champions, One Two Three Stable, The restaurant, Reality Circus and who knows how many others whose names we do not remember, the purpose was only one: ride the wave until the wind was favorable.
Which is a bit like what is happening now: with the spiral of talent shows softened, television has chosen to invest all its energy in docu-reality, those hybrid products that look like reality but which, thanks to the skilful use of editing, they are able with surgical precision to eliminate downtime and make the rhythm more fluid and urgent. If we look more closely, however, we realize that the docu-reality phenomenon has specialized on a specific segment of the public, traditionally reluctant to TV, i.e. Generation Z.
And so, after the extraordinary success of The college, a program that started with uncertain data but then, with the passing of the seasons, becoming more and more recognizable and increasingly ritualized, similar experiments begin to appear on the screen in which young people are subjected to conditions of extreme coexistence to test their reactions. Before I send you to the convent, which we will see soon on Discovery + and then on Real Time, it’s the turn of The Barracks, the new format produced by Blu Yazmine that arrives on Raidue welcomed by an unprecedented expectation. The premise on the card bodes well: 21 boys are called to live in a barracks for 4 weeks to try to learn military discipline and become seasoned comrades. The surrender, however, is a little less successful than expected: beyond the somewhat slow narrative, the problem of The Barracks it concerns two factors: the choice of the cast and the degree of identification with the audience.
Unlike the College, to which unknown boys have always participated who cherished the hope of becoming influencers once they left the program, The Barracks the opposite happens: to participate are, in fact, young people already known to the public of social networks, who on YouTube, who on Instagram, who on TikTok, who arrive well aware of the vehicle and, therefore, all too prepared for the dynamics of a barracks. Which brings us to the second point, given that the setting of the military school is something that, except for the enlisted, is almost a mystery told only by films and TV series of forty years ago: while the background of the College, i.e. school, is familiar to everyone (including homework, interrogation anxiety, the desire to party on a school trip), born The Barracks it is a little more difficult to enter the system, perhaps wondering why getting up in the morning and doing fifty pushups is so necessary – it will certainly affect the fact that we have been indoors in overalls for a year and pushups were not done before, let alone now. It is also a pity that the children’s stories are not central, but confined to the margins of history, as happened to Erika Mattina, who in life is the administrator of the Instagram page The pearls of homophobes together with his partner Martina, only we discover it a few minutes after the end of the first episode. If we add to this an excessive copying of some sequences of the College, first of all the hair cut, we realize that the program still needs time not only to find its own identity, but also to strengthen and walk on its own feet. Experiments on TV are welcome (behind The Barracks, after all, there is Ilaria Dallatana, the same one she chose to wear The college on Raidue), but pay attention to the balance of the formula.
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