Lifestyle
Down the reality TV rabbit hole
One crook back and a few decades of television later, Rachael’s reality TV binge turned into a surprising look at culture, comfort and why we still love low-stakes drama.
By Rachael Mogan-McIntosh
I went down a reality TV historical rabbit hole recently when, laid up with a bulging disc, I stumbled upon the BBC series Tales from a Green Valley. In this show, producers recreated a farm from the 1620s in rural Wales into a slow, calm, fascinating piece of television. As I lay in bed, still as a corpse, I watched historians and anthropologists shovel snow in soggy woollen trousers and save their urine for laundry day. I admired them deeply, knowing that I would last five minutes, and only if those five were by a roaring fire.
A confession: I love reality TV. My all-time favourite is Survivor, but I also have a soft spot for the camp wit of the Real Housewives and the Downton-Abbey-on- -high-seas shenanigans of Below Deck: Mediterranean, in which a young, saucy crew look after demanding billionaires on a luxurious super-yacht in various stunning locations across Croatia, France and Italy. I began watching Below Deck when I was bedridden with a (different) bulging disc during an early, scary Covid lockdown. I was in pain, the pandemic was uncertain and frightening, and the pedestrian, compelling drama of Below Deck got me through.
Green Valley was a gateway drug to Edwardian Farm and Victorian Farm, and Wartime Farm, and then I started thinking about where it all began, which is what led me to An American Family.
America’s first reality TV
In 1973, An American Family blew the minds of a culture used to the wholesome fare of The Brady Bunch, The Waltons and Leave it to Beaver. Over the course of 12 episodes, viewers watched parents Pat and Jay separate while eldest son Lance – gay and living in New York's storied Chelsea Hotel – reflected the counterculture. To many, Pat, Jay and Lance became the symbols of the modern ‘broken family’.
Australia’s first reality villain
In Australia, we went nuts for Noeline Donaher, the bourbon-slamming, chain-smoking bottle blond matriarch of 1991’s Sylvania Waters. Casually sexist, racist and prone to shrieking ‘no wonder I drink!’, Noeline was regarded as an embarrassing symbol of brash vulgarity. Australia was captivated and so was I, via YouTube, 34 years after I’d watched it the first time.
The balloon debate
Which leads me to a show I have loved watching for over 25 years – Survivor. It’s an example of what’s called a ‘balloon debate’ format, a concept drawn from the thought experiment in which one person at a time is ejected from a hot-air balloon, and it’s at the heart of competition formats like Big Brother, MasterChef, The Biggest Loser, Alone, and a thousand more. Big Brother introduced surveillance TV, with contestants filmed as they slept, and marked the start of a new cultural framework around ‘privacy’.
The most recent masterpiece of the ‘balloon debate’ format is Celebrity Traitors UK. Perhaps a single scene exemplifies the glorious wit, camp and suspense of the program. Contestants, including British national treasure Stephen Fry, are chained to the wall of a darkened shed and told by their deadpan host Claudia Winkleman: “Prepare for the most frightening corporate Away Day of your life.” All the celebrities look spooked and into the silence 72-year-old celebrated actress Celia Imrie emits a small squeaky noise. “I just farted, Claudia,” Imrie admits. “I’m so sorry. It’s my nerves! But I always own up.”
The moment went viral on YouTube in the perfectly titled clip: ‘Celia Imrie Breaks Tension by Breaking Wind’.
The audience grows up
“Unstable and pretty? That’s gold,” said a casting director interviewed by Emily Nussbaum in her book Cue the Sun, the title of which is taken from the Jim Carrey film The Truman Show, in which the lead character has no idea that his whole life is a television set.
Such innocence is long gone. Modern audiences are aware of the ‘grammar’ of reality TV and its concepts of ‘diary rooms’, ‘villain edits’ and ‘frankenbites’, where an audio clip is edited to tell a particular story. Survivor, in particular, has a specific and extensive grammar, and understanding the lore of ‘alliances’, ‘blindsides’ and ‘challenge beasts’ is part of the fun of being a ‘superfan’.
I’ve grown up alongside reality TV and so has the culture. Dating shows introduced concepts like ‘gaslighting’, ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘relationship red flags’ to the family dinner table. Love on the Spectrum introduced us to autistic daters and Queer Eye introduced us to a loving, gentle form of masculinity (along with the term ‘metrosexual’). Through Couples Therapy, we’ve watched four seasons of real-life relationships under the microscope and psychoanalyst Orna Guralnik has even become a meme: seen here, delivering therapy to Santa and Mrs Claus.
From reality TV to real power
“The most successful reality show had it all,” says Nussbaum in Cue the Sun. “A titillating flash of the authentic, framed by the dark glitter of the fake, like a dash of salt in dark chocolate. No taste was harder to resist.”
For more than five decades, reality TV has created stars and villains, made billionaires out of Kardashians, and in perhaps the greatest example of its influence, shaped and branded Donald Trump into a figure entrusted by mainstream America with the highest power in their country.
Reality TV with a sense of humour can also just be great, escapist viewing. Back in that Covid lockdown, with my back pain as sharp as a hot pie, I immersed myself in a multi-episode Below Deck storyline in which the crew were furious with the chef for making onion soup for a guest whose preference sheet clearly stated his aversion to alliums. And laid up again, five years later, Green Valley took my mind off the pain by inviting me to invest in the wash-day troubles of seventeenth century rural Wales. Low-stakes drama: just what the doctor ordered.
Feature image: iStock/Prostock-Studio
Tell us in the comments: what’s your favourite reality TV watch?
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