Disturbing

Big Brother fans were not happy and demanded one housemate be removed

Fans rushed to complain after the latest scenes described as ‘scary to watch’.

Big Brother has been hit with thousands of complaints to Ofcom after what viewers said were ‘disturbing’ scenes. The regulator has once again updated its weekly stats of those received between the dates of October 13 and October 19.

The number of complaints range from just dozens up to thousands. It means that one of the most recent instalments of ITV’s reality series has attracted the most ire from fans throughout the entire run of the current series.

That was following the episode which aired on ITV2 on October 19. This attracted a staggering 7,138 complaints. This is an extraordinary amount even compared to the episode which gained the second most complaints over the last week, which was October 18 which received 658.

Ofcom have confirmed that complaints on October 19 related to Omar’s behaviour towards Rhianna. Meanwhile those on October 18 were over alleged bullying behaviour by Philip.

Scenes involving Omar and Rihanna on Monday this week caused a big stir among viewers. The couple seemed to cool things off with their relationship while Rihanna at one point claimed Omar was ‘acting weird’.

Later Omar told Rihanna to stop talking about him with others. Afterwards, he had his own conversation with Lynx about Rihanna,.

Before bed, he invited Rihanna for a chat, claiming he ‘could not sleep on it’. In the store room Rihanna told him: “From eviction night, up until now I feel like you’ve been acting weird with me.”

She was eventually called to the Diary Room to check if she was OK. She said: “I’m not that good but I’ll be fine. Obviously me and Omar have not been good over the last few days and sometimes I don’t like the way he speaks to me.”

Ensure our latest Big Brother stories always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source. Click here to activate or add us as Preferred Source in your Google search settings.

Fans were not pleased with what they saw. A thread on Big Brother UK subreddit saw several admit that they made a complaint to Ofcom.

One person said: “I’ve just put my complaint in. That was so disturbing and scary to watch.” Another added: “I’ve never made an ofcom complaint before but it feels so important to do something… if there’s any chance this can pressure BB production into removing Omar. . . So so dark.”

Women’s Aid released a statement following the backlash and said: “We’re seeing coercive and controlling behaviours being given a platform in popular media like Big Brother. We’ve been contacted by many viewers who have expressed concern. Not only does Big Brother risk minimising survivors’ experiences, it also risks presenting abuse as a form of entertainment.

“Producers should understand their responsibility to keep contestants emotionally and physically safe. The women in these programmes are real people and need real support. We continue to urge television companies such as ITV to engage with experts like Women’s Aid to understand the nature of abuse and how they can do better to protect contestants.”

A spokesperson for Big Brother said: “All Housemates receive Respect and Inclusion training and an extensive briefing from the Big Brother Senior team to prepare them for living in the House and to set out Big Brother’s expectations for appropriate behaviour and language.

“Housemates are monitored 24 hours a day and any instances of inappropriate behaviour are responded to appropriately. Welfare and safeguarding are prioritised throughout the production, with a dedicated welfare team available to support Housemates before, during and after their time in the House.”

Big Brother also received 206 complaints over the most recent live eviction show, about the alleged bullying of Rob by Rochelle and Philip. 110 complaints were also made for the episode aired on October 13 over a range of issues including comments made by Rochelle about Yasmin’s weight, Omar’s behaviour towards Yasmin and Rhianna, and Lynx’s behaviour towards Rob.

Big Brother continues tonight at 9pm on ITV2 and ITVX.

“Tip Toe,” a fine new drama from Russell T Davies premiering Friday on Starz, begins at the end, with Leo Struther (Alan Cumming, phenomenally good), a gay Manchester bar owner, hanging dead from a streetlight outside his house, as a woman screams and his neighbor Clive Goss (David Morrissey) stands breathing heavily on his porch. Then, as so many series do nowadays, it goes back in time — 10 days here — to tell the tale that got them there.

And so you are prepared from the beginning for tragedy, though not everything that happens in its five episodes will be tragic — some of what we see will be sweet and even celebratory — and one might forget for a moment where this is all heading, and even believe that what we’ve already seen will turn out differently.

The series sets off in a comparatively light mood. Chasing a one-night stand who’s stolen his laptop, Leo finds he’s locked himself out of his house, and, dressed only in his underwear, goes next door to ask if he can borrow a phone to call his friend Stephanie (Elizabeth Berrington) to bring him a spare key; here we meet the Goss family, Clive, an out-of-work electrician; his wife, Marie (Pooky Quesnel), who doesn’t like Clive; 16-year-old son George (Jackson Connor), gay and closeted; and 25-year-old son Saul (Joseph Evans), an easygoing hunk who lives at home, secretly makes money on OnlyFans and accepts everyone for who they are. Leo and the Gosses have been living amicably at arm’s length for 14 years, though their lives are about to become closely entwined, with disastrous results.

In an act of something like willful, somewhat disturbing friendliness, or a desire not to have to deal with Leo the next time he’s locked out, Clive makes a copy of Leo’s key and installs a lock box by his door. (By the Chekov’s gun rule, a key copied in Episode 1 is bound to be turned in a lock in whatever later act Davies deems advantageous.) Then, Leo gives Clive work at his bar.

Alan Cumming and David Morrissey play neighbors whose relationship escalates to violence in “Tip Toe.”

(Ben Blackall / Starz)

Leo’s bar, Spit and Polish, sits on Canal Street in Manchester’s long-established “gay village.” It’s a safe space for his employees and regulars, including Zee (Iz Hesketh), who’s been sleeping hidden in the bar, frightened of new flatmates since coming out as a trans woman, and Melba (Paul Rhys, brilliant), a former drag performer who holds down the end of the bar like Norm from “Cheers” and carries a torch for Leo.

Things will go generally downhill from here, in a narrative of escalating misunderstanding — not in the sense of an innocent mistake, of simply getting the wrong end of the stick (though that’s part of it), but as a contemporary habit of mind, blinkered, closed to facts but open to conspiracies. (Clive, a consumer of social media disinformation, believes that AIDS and COVID are fake); he lives in fear.

Directed by Peter Hoar, it’s a rough watch, yet beautifully wrought and delicately performed, inspiring and depressing, hopeless and hopeful by turns Davies has points to make — hanging your protagonist is not subtle — but his dialogue carries a lot of weight lightly; long conversations ebb and flow and rise and fall like compressed playlets. If there is something schematic about the arc, the characters within it, Clive as much as Leo, are completely human. They stand for something bigger than themselves, but they also stand for themselves.

Davies brought gay life in its infinite variety to television with the 1999 series “Queer as Folk” (also set on Canal Street) and gender fluidity to “Doctor Who,” the series he revived in 2005 and returned to in 2023. (The Tardis is currently in limbo.) His “Cucumber,” about middle-age gay men, and “Banana,” about young LGBTQ+ people, are also set in Manchester, where Davies has lived since the late 1980s. “Tip Toe” has been crafted for an age of surging homophobia and anti-gay violence. “The president of America has given these men permission to attack us,” says Melba, as he sits with Leo late one night by the canal. The series’ dark prophet, he gives it its title.

“It’s a storm, it’s a tide, it’s a great big tsunami. We’re in the middle of it right now … If you’d asked me in 1996 what do you think 2026 will be like, I’d have said ‘glory days’ … But they tricked us didn’t they? They let us all come out, so now we’re standing in he open ready for them to shoot us down. I used to walk into a room and just go, ‘Ta-da!’ Now I tip toe, just in case.”