Launching this Wednesday on Channel Four - Seven Days Is a major, new a new kind of documentary series in which viewers can follow the lives of a variety of compelling characters as they actually happen.
Notting Hill in West London will become TV's biggest reality set and the backdrop for a docu-soap where what you see has only just taken place.
Instead of confining participants in the jungle or a purpose-built house, the docu-soap takes place in homes and offices. The old rules of reality TV are being broken by encouraging the public to interact with the characters online and by allowing real outside events to influence the show.
Through the accompanying website, viewers will be able to provide advice to the characters.
Between 20 and 30 members of the public, living or working in Notting Hill, have agreed to be filmed as the narratives of their lives unfold. Each episode will be broadcast in the same week that it is filmed.
The fast-turnaround nature means that the characters will be living through and talking about the same things as the viewers at home. By combining the best of documentary film-making with the speed of reality television editing, Seven Days will capture the ways people discuss the events and issues of the week, whether they are about politics, celebrity, news or sport.
The show will feature an unemployed musician and rapper, an interior designer, an estate agent, a florist, a hairdresser trying to stop his business from going under, a mother-of-three and chef Aldo Zilli's daughter Laura.
