Reality shows used to mean just that. Now, they’re merely a route into a circuit where contestants bounce from one programme to the next in search of juicy headlines
The veracity of reality TV programmes was, once upon a time, a major sticking point for viewers. If we caught out contestants with an obviously choreographed fight (the moves rarely change – a pointed insult before a splash of wine in the face), it was almost grounds to contact Ofcom. Now, though, we barely bat an eyelid at their flagrant falseness. The producers are practically characters on the shows, so obvious is their presence.
Each time we settle in for an episode of The Only Way Is Essex (Towie), the opening sequence reminds us that, while all the people are real, “some of what they do may have been plucked, plumped, trimmed” or whatever other beauty-based pun Denise van Outen uses to mean “heavily scripted”. The final scene of MTV’s The Hills notoriously owned its viewers with a direct nod to its fabrication, the cameras panning away from a brooding Brody Jenner to reveal that he was standing on a backlot, with the lights, camera and action of Tinseltown surrounding him. Everything from the trees to the
Hollywood sign were revealed to be fake, inferring that the stories we had been following for four years were, too.