As an 11-year-old, I remember being disturbed, horrified and mesmerised by a bizarre movie called The Running Man starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In it, the muscle-bound anglo anti-articulator played a cop wrongly blamed for a massacre who is blackmailed into going on a television game show called, strangely enough, The Running Man.

But this was no ordinary game show, even though it came complete with such staples as the smarmy host, pretty girls in skimpy clothing, dodgy graphics and Ritalin-inspired theme music.

Instead, this one featured convicted criminals literally running for their lives inside an enclosure while being hunted down by a set of stalkers given carte blanche to stab, maim, shoot, slice and ultimately kill with abandon.

The movie is set in 2017, but I fear the current game show mentality here in the real world of 2008 has already achieved such frightening, zero moral, genuine humiliation/pain/emotional torture-for-public-titillation benchmarks.

Perhaps those benchmarks were set centuries ago when bloodthirsty spectators packed into the Coliseum to watch wide-eyed as Christians and other wretched souls were pulled apart by lions in one of the most macabre public acts in human history.

Moment of Truth (WIN, Tuesdays, 7.30pm) is the most despicable show on television. It will leave a worse taste in your mouth than a rotten egg, bacteria-laced mettwurst and liquefying green cheese, mouldy bread sandwich washed down with a pint of battery acid.

It’s American, of course, and puts members of the public in a red chair and under a spotlight, where they answer personal questions like: Have you ever been paid for sex? Have you ever gambled away your kids’ trust fund, taken a nude picture of yourself, forced yourself to vomit after eating, helped smuggle something into the country? Are you in love with your girlfriend (sitting in the audience) and is there a part of your partner’s body that repulses you?

Charming.

The show then uses a lie detector test, and we all know how accurate those things are, to determine whether or not they’re telling the truth.

Why would anyone want to go on this show? Why does anyone ever do ridiculous things that a global television audience will see? Money.

Answer 21 questions “correctly”, or at least in parallel with the lie detector’s results, and win $500,000.

There’s lots to hate about this show and lots of reasons to shudder and then turn off the TV.

It’s produced by a company called LightHearted Entertainment, it rates through the roof and it has spin-offs in no less than 23 countries of the world – although the Colombian version was cancelled when a contestant admitted to hiring a hitman to kill her husband. But, hey, she won $25,000 for that admission, so let’s not come down too hard on her.

Is the ordinary Joe Blow and Jane Doe that desperate to rise up out of the mundane nothingness of their lives that they feel they must go on these shows in a desperate attempt to achieve some form of notoriety?

Can they even comprehend exactly how much dignity, self-esteem and respect from their families they are sacrificing in their rabid pursuit of a few measly dollars and 20 minutes in the spotlight?

Does $25,000 really compensate for the despondent look in your son’s eyes when your worst character traits, flaws and even criminal offences are laid bare?

Host Mark L Wahlberg (no, not Marky Mark) asks at the head of the show: “Is there an honest person left in America?”

Maybe if there was at least one, a show like this would never have been made. It should be yanked off air immediately.

Disturbing, horrifying, but not mesmerising. Arnie is an actor. These people, sadly, are not.

— REBECCA MARSHALL