“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing – it was my bloody life being played out on TV. It was unmistakeable,” thirty four year old Robin Hurques has been telling the Daily Norks of his shock at seeing his entire life adapted into a TV series on a popular streaming service – apparently without his permission. “I mean, at first it wasn’t obvious – everyone was being played by actors and it had been filmed in a different town, but everything that happened and everything that was said sounded vaguely familiar. It only really hit me when I saw a scene where the lead character farted loudly in his local shop, clearing the place with the stench – I’d done the exact same thing the week before! Even the angry exchange between the shop owner and myself was repeated word for word!” The steaming service involved, Webpix, has denied that it had based its new fifteen episode series Diary of a Sad Bastard on Huques’ life, claiming that it was entirely fictional and any resemblances to actual events were purely coincidental. “These allegations are clearly quite ridiculous,” a spokesperson told TV listing magazine Wireless Times. “For one thing, Mr Huques lives in Slough and the TV series is quite clearly set in Bracknell, for another, the lead actor looks nothing like Mr Huques. As for the scene he has highllighted – well, who of us hasn’t embarrassed ourselves by publicly breaking wind at an inappropriate time and place? I mean, that’s the whole point of the series – to dramatically portray the mundane nature of everyday life in contemporary Britain. It is only natural that people living such lives will recognise and identify many of the scenarios presented.”

Lawyers acting for Huques, however, have uncovered a clause in his contract with Webpix which seems to give the company the right to exploit his life by adapting it dramatically or presenting it as a documentary. “It seems that this is now a standard clause in the small print of their contracts,” says the plastic guttering salesman. “Apparently they can steal your life to provide them with content and there’s nothing you can do! According to my solicitors, the only loophole they can find is that if I cancel my subscription, I might at least be able to prevent a second series from going out. But I really don’t want to do that as I’m part way through watching several series exclusive to the service – not to mention the movie premieres and live sport! I’m not sure if my right to privacy is worth losing access to all of that.” Huques’ preferred option would be to try and exert some kind of editorial control over the way his life is being depicted. “I really don’t like the way they have cast me – I’m played by that sleazy looking guy off of that other thing, where he played the sex trafficker specialising in under age girls. You know – it was on last year,” he complains. “Not only does he always play scummy characters, but he’s too fat as well – there’s no way I’m that porky. Plus, they’ve embellished some stuff – I don’t obsessively stalk my ex-girlfriend. Well, there was that one time when I sat outside her house all night to see if she was shagging that bastard Don Wickles – but we’d just broken up and I was upset. OK, I might have climbed on her bins to try and look through the bathroom window to try and confirm my suspicions – but it was just the once.”

While Huques’ legal advisors might have suggested that their client switch streaming service, such move might not, in fact, protect his privacy, with at least one user of a rival service having suffered a similar experience. “You can imagine how shocked I was when I tuned into the new ‘reality documentary’ series on Prime Drek, Life of a Loser, only to find that it was about me,” Lucy Retters, a twenty nine year old care assistant from Staines told the Daily Norks. “My entire daily life seemed to have been filmed with hidden cameras and dronesand edited into thirty minute episodes. Everything I do, every interaction, is on display. It is all so mundane, it makes me look like such a sad git leading an utterly insignificant life.” As with Huques, a close examination of her contract with the streamer revealed a clause allowing them to film her and broadcast the footage. “What’s the point, though? “ she asks.”Surely hour after hour of someone’s ordinary life doesn’t constitute entertainment, does it?” Retters suspects that Prime Drek shares this sentiment as she has noticed that some of the events in her current life seem to have been contrived by the streaming company purely for the benefit of the cameras. “Confrontations with aggressive beggars, or that store detective falsely accusing me of shop lifting seem to have been set up by them to add some drama,” she claims. “Even that incident the other day when that bloke felt me up in a bus queue and I slapped him was contrived for dramatic effect – he was an actor I remembered seeing in a TV commercial. It is getting to the stage where I can’t tell what is real any more!”

But just why are streaming services seemingly so keen to exploit the lives of their subscribers in this way? “Haven’t you ever wondered what would happen if TV started to run out of content?” asks top TV critic Rick Wedge. “The explosion of streaming outlets in recent years has created a massive demand for original content with which to keep their subscribers loyal, but the strain is already showing in terms of their inspiration for this programming. The exploitation of existing properties is really beginning to run out of stream, as original premises are spread ever thinner.” Wedge pints to Webpix recent expansion of a five minute vintage Daffy Duck cartoon into a ten part series labouriously chronicling the character’s origins and the childhood traumas that formed his adult character, before examining the effects of his comedic antics on victims like Porky Pig. “It’s the same all over – how many more Star Trek series can Paramount come up with, for God’s sake? Over at Disney we’ve got apparently endless expansions of the Star Wars universe being ground out, as they seize on supporting characters or locations – I look forward eagerly to the ten part series chronicling the adventures of Greedo before Han Solo shot him in the first film.” he opines. “Now producers are clutching at any real life situation to hang a sensational drama upon- they’ve pretty much exhausted all the sensational (or even mildly interesting) ones involving celebrities and public figures, so overblown TV series being based upon the lives of ordinary people, is the next logical step. So, subscribers need to brace themselves to be played by some on the skids movie star desperate for a star turn in fictionalised versions of their lives which try to sensationalise visits to the laundry or shopping in Aldi.”

Huques’ ordeal, at least, might be coming to an end, with Webpix announcing that Diary of a Sad Bastard wouldn’t be renewed beyond its first season. “Unfortunately, it seems that we miscalculated our viewers’ voyeuristic interest in the utterly ordinary lives of average people,” a spokesperson told the press. “So, while not conceding that the series is, in any way, based on Mr Huques’ life, it seems that he will only have been famous for fifteen episodes.” The spokesperson declined to comment on reports that the service had found a more interesting subscriber in Surbiton, who hosted swingers parties, to base their next series on.