Dutch Reality Show Provokes Riot

A Dutch reality TV show has been pulled after one of its participants admitted sexually abusing his daughter, provoking a riot among viewers that ended with 40 people being arrested.

More than 100 police in riot gear were called to the city of Den Bosch after the claim was made in an episode of a reality show called Probleemwijken, or Problem Neighbourhoods.

Local authorities demanded that broadcaster SBS 6 stop broadcasting the show, a docusoap about people "living on the fringes" of Dutch society.

Channel bosses have shelved the final instalment of the series, which was due to air tonight, and replaced it with a special edition looking at the media reaction to the show.

Angry viewers took to the streets after they saw one of their neighbours confess on screen that he had sexually abused his eight-year-old daughter.

Police made around 40 arrests, according to Dutch media reports, as residents attempted to storm their neighbour's house. The man was absent from his home at the time.

Local authorities in the Netherlands claimed the programme gave an unfair impression of the neighbourhood and issued an emergency order banning "undesirable gatherings" in the district of Graafsewijk.

The show claims to portray the "other side of the Netherlands" and follows the daily lives of people who "live on the fringes of society" and react "very emotionally", according to the SBS website.