In the age of "Peak TV" and more terrific television across the spectrum, there's also been a widening of the Trash TV side, exemplified by yet another trashy new British reality teletrash entry, Bromans that comes complete with, yes, lets say it, genital casts.
What is this new trash, you may ask?
In Bromans that just started on ITV2 in the United Kingdom, 8 so-called "modern day" Brit-trash lads are thrown back in time to live in Romans times to compete for prizes.
Within the first 5 minutes the lot has to get naked, Gladiator-wise to recreate the Roman-slave experience, because nothing spells out TV-trash as quickly as getting "nekkid" in a cosplay reality TV show.
The British print media has had a field day with the TV trash of Bromans - a title play between the words "bromance" and "Romans" - in which the blokes are filmed in "Roman times" to see if they can live and cope (and fight naked) like Roman gladiators.
Oh, warns ITV - that also does highbrow TV like Downton Abbey - "Bromans contains strong language and nudity".
"Why can't we pull ourselves away from trash television like ITV2's Bromans?"laments Britain's The Sun. When a UK tabloids newspaper, itself trash, starts to worry, you should know the end of the world is one step nearer.
The Daily Mail calls Bromans vain and vacuous, saying "these are Tony Blair's millennials. This nation can be proud".
The Evening Standard reports that some of the bro-bros were allegedly "tricked" to take part, while Britain's The Metro breathlessly exclaimed that Bromans might just become "your new guilty viewing pleasure".
The tabloid magazine OK!, a bastion of accurate investigative reporting also reports that the dudes were "tricked" into appearing on the show, lured by promises of it merely being a "summer jolly".
There's not just muscle in the show but also golden bikinis and sand wrestling as the moron men's girlfriends have to rake through Colosseum sand to find clothes for them.
Luckily a classics professor Dr Andrew Sillett in Britain who live-tweeted the first episode, ready to point out mistakes, was delighted by how historically accurate Bromans surprisingly turned out to be.
Despite the penises, Dr Andrew Sillett says even the full-frontal male nudity of Bromans serves a real purpose and tweeted: "Obvious an excuse to show eight c*cks on ITV2 at five minutes past the watershed, but some truth in the humiliation of the gladiator".
Thank you, professor!
Forbes was harsh and gave a colisseum thumbs down, saying Bromans "fails as both history and entertainment" and is "simply a reality-couple-adventure show containing a heavy dose of various naked body parts, with all of its ancient world information seemingly cribbed from either Gladiator or 300".
Who knows if South African viewers will ever get to see the tele-trash of Bromans?
Will it pop up on ITV Choice (DStv 123) or CBS Reality (DStv 132) or one of the other reali-trashy channels on DStv or StarSat?
Who knows? More importantly, who really cares?
