The real-life 'Truman Show'

Seth Green. Photo by AP.
Seth Green. Photo by AP.
Seth Green promises his new web series Control TV isn't a Dr Evil kind of thing.

Control TV is a new reality web series that bills itself as a "a real-life Truman Show".

Like the Jim Carrey movie, Tristan Couvares has cameras following him all day long, but with Control TV, viewers on the web vote to make Couvares' decisions.

It may sound slightly dystopic, but Green, who produces the show with Matthew Senreich, says Control TV is "part entertainment and part vicarious improvement of another human being".

"It's not Gerard Butler in Gamer, it's not The Running Man," Green says, referring to two films where lives are sacrificed for entertainment.

"We're doing something a little less malicious than that."

Instead, Green sees the show as a chance for an uncertain, 25-year-old man to be propelled by the web-watching masses.

In his view, the internet can be a benevolent god.

"We're going to guide it so that none of the decisions are really detrimental to him," says Green.

"It could be as simple as putting him in funny clothes when he goes to a job interview or insisting that he has a hidden agenda when he speaks to a girl for the first time, or whether he's going to eat oatmeal or an English muffin to start his day."

Viewers, who can follow at http://controlTV.com, decide things for Couvares about 10-15 times a day.

Voting is for multiple-choice options - A, B or C - which means Couvares is not forced to do anything the show's producers haven't already prepared.

"Based on what his life starts to become, we're going to have to adapt as producers," says Senreich, who co-created the animated series Robot Chicken with Green, who has appeared in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Austin Powers.

Couvares streams live 24 hours a day.

A webisode also runs daily summarising each day's events.

Couvares says he knows what's going to be funny, what people are going to want to see.

"It isn't like we're pretending there's no camera.

"It isn't like we're saying that this is real life. Everyone is acknowledging how strange and bizarre this situation is."

Although many have experimented in streaming their lives live on the internet, Control TV hopes the interactivity with the audience will set the show apart.

There are clear parallels to Big Brother, which also includes live webcasts and viewer multiple-choice voting options for certain aspects of the show.

Green admits he's addicted to Big Brother.

He acknowledges he has some concerns about how such an experiment might play out.

"Strangers. Crazy people," he says.

"We're going to be out there, he's going to have a camera following. People can react bizarrely when they are in front of cameras out in public. So we're hoping that no-one is going to go out of their way to hurt our guy."

But Green maintains his optimism in the wisdom of the crowd.

"We're just testing the boundaries of it," he says.

"We really want to see what can come of it. There's things that are exclusive to this medium and we want to play around."

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