IT WAS supposed to be the show that never ended, taking the contestants from cradle to grave in a fake village sheltered from the stress of everyday Germany.

Yesterday, to the disappointment of a few viewers (most of them relatives of the hapless would-be celebrities), the series was cancelled. Due to falling audience numbers, the last episode of this supposedly eternal reality television show will be shown in February.

The decision ended a dream of recreating The Truman Show. In the film of that name, the hero, played by Jim Carrey, is monitored by a worldwide audience 24 hours a day for the duration of his life.

The team that produced Big Brother had hoped to create a similar virtual world. Contestants could expect to live in a mortgage-free house, to have a job for life, the chance to study free and the prospect of big bonuses for working hard. It should have been a crime-free idyll. All they had to do was allow themselves to be watched by 100 cameras and microphones, give up all contact with the outside world and obey the laws made by Big Brother. “We created a brand new universe,” Borris Brandt, of Endemol Deutschland, the company behind Big Brother, said.

Extraordinary effort was put into creating the village, which even had a class system. There was a daffodil-framed village square with a Victorian-style town house. This was the place inhabited by the “upper class” contestants. Near by was a bungalow for the “middle class” contestants. The “poor” contestants were given a house with no lock on the door. Tension between the classes in the village were supposed to sustain viewers’ interest in the programme.

Perversly, German viewers seem to prefer real life. Even running against news programmes, the Big Brother series started to flounder. To spice matters up the producers threw in lesbian kisses, stripteases and erotic games. Sex was always a necessary ingredient because the point was that the residents should marry each other and have children.

“The series has not attracted as many viewers as we would have liked,” Katja Hofem-Best, the head of programming at television station RTL2, said. The producers are reluctant to release the viewing figures because they do not want the programme to discredit the concept of reality television.

Germany was quick to buy the Big Brother format and has constantly tried to push back its boundaries to hang on to audiences that tend to flag after about six months. German TV was the first to put housemates away for a year and offer a €1 million (£686,000) reward to the winner.

One show put eight old-age pensioners in a flat and filmed as they squabbled over kitchen duties. It was Germany too that encouraged 12 young Russian women to be locked up in a shipping container without food. By comparison Big Brother — the Village, with its simulated class conflict, looks almost benign, if lacking in warmth. Der Spiegel magazine described the set-up as about “as cosy as Guantanamo Bay”.

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