(C4, 8pm) | | barred from making calls to mobile |
Usually the answer to the | | numbers on it. By disconnecting them |
question posed by the title of this | | from their friends, this threatens, in |
occasional TV series is “yes” - | | one stroke, to rob Amy, Emma, |
those guinea pigs who volunteer | | Michelle and Hayley of their social |
to live without, say, television or | | life. As they are left out of the usual |
make-up cope very well, and | | making of arrangements, they |
resolve to become less | | become isolated, 1970s-style teens, |
dependent in future. | | anxiously waiting for the lone phone |
However, when a 10-phone | | to ring. |
household is asked to turn the | | Relations between parents and |
clock back to the era before | | daughters also deteriorate, because |
mass mobile use, the fascinating | | both the night-time taxi service that |
result is instant family | | the former provide for the girls, and |
breakdown. | | their ability to control what time they |
The Coles - parents Steve | | get home from their nights out, |
and Jo, four girls aged between | | depend on calls to check up on them. |
12 and 17, and a 14-year-old boy | | Rows, sulks and curfew breaches are |
who is so unfazed by the | | the result, and two of the girls |
experiment that he gets little | | become so frustrated that they break |
screen time - agree to lock their | | into the strongbox and remove a |
mobiles in a strongbox for a | | forbidden mobile. |
fortnight, limiting themselves to using | | |
a single old-fashioned phone and | | John Dugdales |