It’s not the first ad campaign that has tried to stimulate the audience’s interest by encouraging them to intervene in its storyline, but it’s certainly the most lacklustre. It’s apparently five years since Kris Marshall (him off My Family) and Esther Hall (her off Spooks and Waking the Dead, it says here) started making ads showing how BT products could be seamlessly integrated into the chaos of contemporary family life. He had moved in with her and her kids, the storyline went, and whatever challenges and obstacles this domestic situation might produce, at least they would all be able to rely on the phone and internet connectivity of a BT Home Hub.

This campaign rumbled on for about three years, troubling no-one particularly, and then Marshall, in real life, was hit by a car. At first there were fears that he had been seriously injured, but he made a full recovery. After that, though, something went
very weird. The ads continued to be made but, as far as I can remember, at no point after Marshall's physical recovery did he and Hall appear on screen at the same time. The storyline took a new turn: his character had to move a long way away due to work and their long-distance relationship got a bit awkward for a while, but they were determined to make it work (in their separately filmed sequences). Eventually she asked his character (on the phone) to marry her, and around that time it became clear that the writers were trying to inject a note of suspense—would he say yes? Would he turn her down? Would the Home Hub keep disconnecting because the data limit had been exceeded? Was
anyone actually invested in this thing?
By now, I was hooked. What was really going on with this situation? It seemed clear that Marshall’s real-life accident had had some kind of impact on his fictional character’s life. What would be
the twist? Were the ads subsequent to the collision all just “Adam’s” dying thoughts about his newly adopted family? The episode where “Jane” appeared to tell people she was getting married didn’t even mention “Adam’s” name; was this a cruel flash-forward to her rebuilding her life after his untimely death and marrying someone else? Was some kind of alternate reality involved? Where, basically, was M Night Shymalan?
Now BT is apparently
offering us the chance to decide this couple’s future. Rather than going the full Web 2.0, though, the makers are staying firmly in the 90s and offering us only two options to choose between, so we don’t have carte blanche to write in with something like “They can’t get married—he’s
clearly her son”. If neither of the storylines on offer involves,
at a minimum, “Adam” falling into a parallel dimension in 2008 and struggling ever since to find his way back, I will officially lose interest.
EDIT FEB 2011: BT's latest transmissions from inside Kris Marshall's head don't bode well:
