The music festival is a rite of passage that nearly every contemporary teenager goes through.

Remember the first time you embarrassingly attempted to pitch your tent? Or partied hard in a field somewhere to a loud soundtrack while under the influence of cheap booze (or something harder)?

From ‘making friends’ with fellow punters to enduring the bleak test of endurance that is festival bathroom facilities (or lack thereof) – it’s a total character-building/crushing gauntlet.

Now imagine going through all that while under the watchful eye of your parents… and a national audience.

There’s good formulas for music television, and then there’s Festivals, Sex and Suspicious Parents.  

This new BBC Three series – which premiered this week as In The Mix reports – mashes the young music fan’s festival-going experience then injects it with the Big Brother twist of reality television, the catch being that while the young punters are going through their series of festival firsts, their parents are secretly monitoring their every cringeworthy move. There’s good formulas for music television, and then there’s Festivals, Sex and Suspicious Parents.

Proving the point, the victims of the debut episode of Festivals, Sex and Suspicious Parents are 19-year-old Lauren and 20-year-old Chris, who drink, make out, vomit, urinate, and maybe catch some live music, with UK camping festival Kendal Calling providing the backdrop for their antics, as their parents watch on disapprovingly – via live streams, audio feeds, and even inside daft festival fancy dress costumes.

The big reveal intended to be when the parents then rock up after the debauchery settles to scold the young revellers who are supposed to be shocked to learn that the camera crews that were trailing them throughout the festival weren’t just earnest documentary makers.

You probably don’t really need The Guardians reviewer to tell you that the programme is “sneaky and disingenuous” or that “what’s really disconcerting here is the show itself, not the behaviour of its young participants;” but then the whole point of the show is obviously to provide some lowbrow, junk food entertainment.

After all it follows on from BBC Three’s similarly premised series Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents and Snow, Sex and Suspicious Parents (with a cheap Thai holiday and the French Alps providing the respective settings).

Now just wait until an Australian network picks up the concept for a Down Under version. Future Big Day Out and Stereosonic punters, consider yourself warned.

Watch an episode of Festivals, Sex and Suspicious Parents below.

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