A Realty TV Game Show produced by Channel 4, in 2010, originally it ran with a smaller version called Three in A Bed, but Four ended running on its own.
The Show's plot is simple, Four B&B owners compete to be labelled the best value B&B of the week, they come to one of the places, entertained by the hosts, spend the night and have breakfast.The Guests then write down their thoughts in a rating and comment form, which is read by the host and at the end they find out what the guests have paid and the closest to 100% wins the prize.
However, the show never goes to plan, the guests find dirt anywhere the breakfast might be overcooked and the hosts will clash sometimes leading to great viewing for all the wrong reasons.
Contrast with Come Dine With Me.
This Show contains examples of:
- Ain't No Rule: The show sometimes presents Glamping Sites and Venues that don't even serve breakfast, which kind of misses the point of the show. In some cases, places that compete are built on a larger scale with many more rooms and which employ full-time chefs, waiters, housekeepers, porters, receptionists... in other words, not B&B's, but Hotels. Of course, this does not create a level playing field among contestants, and can cause minor controversies.
- Berserk Button: Normally if the ratings are low and/or the hosts fall out due to each others' reviews, the final episode when the comments are read and payments are checked, it all goes down as well as a lead balloon. A Notable example includes a young man confronting a older couple who wrote in their comments that he treated his B&B as child with a toy which was unnecessarily cruel.
- Crazy Cat Lady: There have been pet lovers on the show, most times they have hair everywhere especially on the plates, one old lady decided to make the entertainment about grooming her ill-behaved cats and to take the guests to the pet cemetery.
- Cordon Bleugh Chef: Averted; as most breakfasts are decent, but boy it's difficult to get eggs just right.
- Double Standard: It seems cruel that for people to deduce places for lack of a finish. or felt the place wasn't up to their standards, are the ones that are lacking in the same areas in their own Bed and Breakfast.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The original two series following Three In A Bed had several differences:
- Four In A Bed is 30 minutes long and runs the whole week, Three however was in a hour.
- In Three there was a interchangeable order of Entertainment and meal (there was lunches rather than dinners).
- Also in the early series the guests would say their feedback to the host and present the money each day.
- This changed in the Third Series of Four when the Feedback form was introduced and in the final Three series it appeared.
- Felony Misdemeanor: When rating the rooms, people often dock lots of points for very minor things, like excessive dust, or hair in plugholes.
- Fish out of Water: On occasion, some of the groups together are clearly chosen to put the people out of their comfort zones. The best example of this was a basic B&B on a industrial estate, whose target audience was lorry drivers, unsurprisingly nobody wanted to go back for the reasonable reason they didn't see themselves being in the area.
- French Jerk: There was a couple of weeks done in France and Spain with Ex-Pats, boy there was one guy who wanted to be centre of attention to the point when the one host told him to stop singing, he told him off. Also in the french ones there was a noticeable lack of toilets.
- Heel–Face Turn: Sometimes the polite first host is out to win, and try to have a higher score.
- Hypocritical Humor: It's sometimes laughable as to what people write in their comments or what they claim their B&B is like, only to turn out they shot themselves in the foot when their place gets worst points.
- It's All About Me: There are attention seekers on the show from time to time, mainly wanting to be the centre of attention.
- Is This a Joke?: The behaviour of some people makes you wonder if the contestants need an evaluation before they arrive on the show, the best example of this was the man washing his face in the toilet, it comes out of nowhere and he does it at each B&B.
- Laser-Guided Karma: While it's a case of if you act as a jerk you might be scored low. However with recent episodes resulting in anger from the general public it's unsurprising to say that some places might close due to their host's behaviour.
- Men Can't Keep House: Many times a male hosted place can slack on the cleaning with disastrous effects on the scores. Of course, the opposite can be true to.
- Manipulative Editing: It being a reality show, it's a given this is happening to some degree.
- My God, You Are Serious!: Some of the strangest things that were a reason to deduce points on this show like the lack of metal beds in a country inn, missing tea and coffee making supplies, and lack of Vegetarian sausages, are some of the more bitchy complaints one can expect from this show.
- Never My Fault: Happens on occasion, especially when the owners don't want to admit issues with rooms or cooking. There was an episode where the host annoyed the hell out of a female couple which resulted in him calling her a dog which she took offence to. However he refused to see his behaviour as anything more than a joke. Karma punished him accordingly, and he came last.
- Neat Freak: Enforced by the show, as the whole point is for the rooms to be clean and tidy for guests. Every guest checks their room with a fine tooth comb, finding the odd hair or dust results in a low score, sometimes however they fail to provide a clean place.
- Oh, Crap!: In one episode, one of the breakfast requests was for plain porridge with water, however seconds after the guest took a mouthful he spat in horror, he had a Nut Allergy and the porridge was made with it and so he had to go to hospital, the host did apologise but it affected the rest of the judging.
- Turn Off the Camera: This happens rarely, but in one episode, after one of the guests deduced everyone way too much and resulted in one of the hosts leaving in tears for rating low for incredibly minor things, the results were done in separate rooms to calm everyone down. Of course, the said "cheating" hosts won, still denying it to the last seconds.
- Sleep Deprivation: Many a time on this show you have the guests losing sleep, the reason can be heat-related, noise or the bed itself being the problem.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Whenever someone has a claim to fame they ram it down the other competitor's throats, or if they are a businessman they will annoy people about having a business plan; which is impossible in an unpredictable market.
- In one week a London-based B&B was owned by one such businessman, he used his episode to plug his little empire, which included the activity being his own Fitness Centre and the evening meal in Chip Shop that he owned.
- Spoiler Opening: In every intro, you are given the outline of the show with a little mashup of clips of the episode.
- A Winner Is You: Yeah, they bitch, they put their reputation on the line and some cases lose their business and what do they receive at the end? A plaque, in the first series it was a piece of paper.
- On the other hand, every contestant gets a completely free half-hour advertisement for their premises, running in early prime-time on commercial TV, aimed at an audience whose thoughts may well be leaning towards holiday planning. It takes genius to screw up this marketing opportunity.
- You Just Had to Say It:
- Some people say the wrong thing to impress the other guests only to ruin it on their day.
- Also in one host an older man working with his wife, clearly had a dated sense of humour when entertaining, he came off as Sexist, resulting in the one guest writing about it in the comments, not helped by him calling the smaller breakfast, the women's breakfast.
- This happened in one of the last episodes, the host had a rather brutal feedback form, she had by this point correctly identified the writer, but accidentally reveals that she first believed it to be one of the other contestants, there was a minor disagreement as she attempted to clarify her reasons for her belief which did nothing but make the scene awkward.
