Big Brother, Gary Goldsmith and a Traitors twist: the beginning of the end?

"Celebrity Big Brother" has hit the headlines after the Princess of Wales's uncle, Gary Goldsmith, accused the Duchess of Sussex of "creating drama" between the royals.

Goldsmith said Meghan Markle had put a "stick in the spokes" of a previously "really comfortable" relationship between the trio, reported Sky News.

Goldsmith's presence in the house is expected to draw extra attention to the new series, but that has not saved it from a string of savage reviews. This is the first "Celebrity Big Brother" for six years, wrote Claudia Connell in the Daily Mail, "and, boy, was it not worth the wait".

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'Reality trash'

Goldsmith announced himself "with a wink, tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth", and "eyes in wide 'here comes the entertainment' mode", wrote Shane Watson in The Times. But "beady-eyed viewers" spotted that "his flies were undone".

"Most families have an embarrassing relative", wrote Michael Hogan in The Telegraph, but "mercifully few of them opt to flaunt their eccentricities" on primetime television. "Look away now, Middletons", for "this was reality trash by royal appointment", said Hogan, who wondered if eviction votes would come "flooding in from the Windsor area".

But it is not only Goldsmith who has attracted disdain. The show has a "mostly pitiful line-up", said Connell at the Mail, and to put them together, "Google must have taken one hell of a beating". Only the broadcaster Fern Britton, "looking like she'd rather be anywhere else", managed to "save the day and restore the good name of 'celebrity'".

Louis Walsh and Sharon Osbourne have been enlisted to "judge" the other "CBB" housemates, "watching them from a separate boudoir", said Sean O'Grady in The Independent. They are also "secret housemate spies" – as on the BBC hit game show "The Traitors". Or "something like that – disgracefully it's not thought through".

Noting its move from Channel 4 to ITV, O'Grady feared it would be an "unsuccessful organ transplant, rejected by both host and audience".

'Definitely fun'

Praise for the new series is celebrity-slim on the ground, though Daisy Jones in The Guardian conceded that "it does have promise" and "it's definitely fun to see a slightly less careful, less formulaic TV offering that harks back to a pre-streaming era".

But she recalled that, while in its heyday, a "CBB" launch could draw seven million viewers, now "there isn't that same almost manic atmosphere that can come from celebs desperate for their second shot of golden juice". So, it "feels like the beginning of the end for TV's most ridiculous reality show".

"Though it is still early days, there is something about the launch that lacks the raucous magic of its predecessor," she said. "This isn't watercooler telly in the way it once was."

The "cultural bin fire" and "temple of vacuousness" normally "thrives on conflict, bitching and melodrama", said Carol Midgley in The Times. This time, "despite being spruced up", it "felt tired and flat".