Reality television
Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring unfamiliar people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 1990s with shows such as The Real World, then achieved prominence in the early 2000s with the success of the series Survivor, Idol, and Big Brother, all of which became global franchises.[1] Reality television shows tend to be interspersed with "confessionals", short interview segments in which cast members reflect on or provide context for the events being depicted on-screen; this is most commonly seen in American reality television. Competition-based reality shows typically feature the gradual elimination of participants, either by a panel of judges, by the viewership of the show, or by the contestants themselves.
"Reality TV" and "Reality Show" redirect here. For the channel formerly known as "Reality TV", see CBS Reality. For other uses of "Reality Show", see Reality Show (disambiguation).
Documentaries, television news, sports television, talk shows, and traditional game shows are generally not classified as reality television. Some genres of television programming that predate the reality television boom have been retroactively classified as reality television, including hidden camera shows, talent-search shows, documentary series about ordinary people, high-concept game shows, home improvement shows, and court shows featuring real-life cases and issues.
Reality television has faced significant criticism since its rise in popularity. Critics argue that reality television shows do not accurately reflect reality, in ways both implicit (participants being placed in artificial situations), and deceptive (misleading editing, participants being coached on behavior, storylines generated ahead of time, scenes being staged). Some shows have been accused of rigging the favorite or underdog to win. Other criticisms of reality television shows include that they are intended to humiliate or exploit participants; that they make stars out of untalented people unworthy of fame, infamous figures, or both; and that they glamorize vulgarity.
A number of fictional works since the 1940s have contained elements similar to elements of reality television. They tended to be set in a dystopian future, with subjects being recorded against their will and often involved violence.
Other influences on popular culture[edit]
A number of scripted television comedy and satire shows have adopted the format of the documentary-type reality television show, in "mockumentary" style. The first such show was the BBC series Operation Good Guys, which premiered in 1997. Arguably the best-known and most influential such show is the BBC's The Office (2001), which spawned numerous international remakes, including a successful American version. Other examples include People Like Us (BBC UK, 1998), The Games (ABC Australia, 1999), Trailer Park Boys (2001), Reno 911! (2003), The Naked Brothers Band (2006), Summer Heights High (2007), Parks and Recreation (2009), Modern Family (2009), Come Fly with Me (2010), Real Husbands of Hollywood (2013), Trial & Error (2017) and Abbott Elementary (2021). The genre has even encompassed cartoons (Drawn Together (2004) and Total Drama (2007)) and a show about puppets (The Muppets, 2015).
Not all reality-television-style mockumentary series are comedic: the 2013 American series Siberia has a science fiction-horror bent, while the 2014 Dutch series The First Years is a drama.
The 2013–2015 American sketch comedy series Kroll Show set most of its sketches as excerpts from various fictional reality television shows, which one critic wrote "aren't far off from the lineups at E!, Bravo, and VH1", and parodied those shows' participants' "lack of self-awareness".[142] The show also satirized the often incestuous nature of reality television, in which some series lead to a cascade of spinoffs. Kroll Show executive producer John Levenstein said in an interview that reality TV "has so many tools for telling stories in terms of text and flashbacks and ways to show things to the audience that it's incredibly convenient for comedy and storytelling if you use the full reality show toolkit."[143]
Some feature films have been produced that use some of the conventions of reality television; such films are sometimes referred to as reality films, and sometimes simply as documentaries.[144] Allen Funt's 1970 hidden camera movie What Do You Say to a Naked Lady? was based on his reality-television show Candid Camera. The series Jackass spawned five feature films, starting with Jackass: The Movie in 2002. A similar Finnish show, The Dudesons, was adapted for the film The Dudesons Movie, and a similar British show, Dirty Sanchez, was adapted for Dirty Sanchez: The Movie, both in 2006. The producers of The Real World created The Real Cancun in 2003. The Chinese reality show Keep Running was adapted for the 2015 film Running Man.
The 2003 BBC film The Other Boleyn Girl incorporated reality TV-style confessionals in which the two main characters talked directly to the camera.[145]
In 2007, broadcaster Krishnan Guru-Murthy stated that reality television is "a firm and embedded part of television's vocabulary, used in every genre from game-shows and drama to news and current affairs."[146]
The mumblecore film genre, which began in the mid-2000s, and uses video cameras and relies heavily on improvisation and non-professional actors, has been described as influenced in part by what one critic called "the spring-break psychodrama of MTV's The Real World". Mumblecore director Joe Swanberg has said, "As annoying as reality TV is, it's been really good for filmmakers because it got mainstream audiences used to watching shaky camerawork and different kinds of situations."[147]