When Big Brother first aired in Britain 23 years ago, it was billed as a harmless social experiment. Originating in the Netherlands, and with roots in 1971’s Stanford prison experiment, it was essentially a popularity contest played out in a confined space, with a cash prize for the last person standing. The only danger, or so it was thought at the time, was that it might bore viewers to death.
But Big Brother was a runaway success and transformed the TV landscape. From Survivor to I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! to Love Island, variations on the theme of people being thrown together and subjected to a public vote have been a staple of the schedules ever since.
Now, Big Brother has been rebooted and is back on ITV, with 2.5 million viewing the opening episode – almost twice the audience Love Island pulled in for the first episode of its latest outing in June. It’s a measure of the ever-shorter cycle of nostalgia that Big Brother was only gone for five years, yet it is often talked about as a televisual relic. On its cancellation in 2018, it was deemed tired and toxic, though, even then, little thought was given to the toll on those taking part. Today’s producers know better. The challenge for the series is not just whether it can recapture past glories – at its peak it was watched by 10 million – but whether it can conduct itself responsibly.
Last year, the documentarian Jacques Peretti shone a light on the ugly side of reality TV in the podcast Edge of Reality. The series covered the reality stars who have died by suicide – at Peretti’s count, there have been at least 40 – along with the behind-the-scenes manipulations, the trolling and the non-disclosure agreements foisted on contestants to stop them spilling the beans. The picture he painted of a genre that sucked people in, magnified their flaws, and then spat them out, was damning. It’s little wonder that, in 2020, the regulator Ofcom saw fit to issue new guidelines to protect the wellbeing of reality TV contestants.
So have things got better? In some ways, yes. Love Island was among the first shows of its kind to offer comprehensive aftercare to contestants, including social media training and counselling, though it wasn’t until after the suicides of contestants Sophie Gradon, Mike Thalassitis and presenter Caroline Flack that things changed. The makers of the new Big Brother say they are taking their duty of care for evicted housemates seriously. But such measures can’t insulate contestants from the online vitriol that is now part and parcel of the reality experience, something that wasn’t an issue back in 2000.
The intention may be to do better but the fact remains that, in the age of streaming, with more shows vying for our eyeballs, reality TV is more competitive and more cutthroat than ever – and with that comes a requirement for more drama.
Alas, we can’t have it both ways. We want reality TV to treat its participants with humanity, but in passing comment on these series on social media, we don’t always practise what we preach. Meanwhile, shows that don’t bring the required drama are punished with poor ratings (Big Brother’s had already dropped to 880,000 by Friday night’s eviction) and the threat of cancellation. One thing that’s clear is that reality TV isn’t going anywhere. So rather than humiliating contestants and trying to undo any damage with aftercare programmes, producers might want to think harder about how shows are structured, cast and filmed.
It’s heartening to note that some of the most successful shows of recent times have been those that have found ways to inject drama without cruelty or judgment. The Traitors, a murder-mystery series featuring civilian contestants, was steeped in duplicity and treachery, but only of the pantomime variety. Channel 4’s The Piano, ostensibly a talent contest – once the cruellest format of them all – asked amateur pianists to perform on instruments installed in railway stations without knowing they were being rated by expert judges behind the scenes. The result was heartwarming and proof that drama needn’t go hand in hand with discord. And let’s not forget The Great British Bake Off, a deliberately low-stakes show now on its 14th series, in which contestants make a point of cheering each other on.
In short, reality TV has evolved, spawning friendlier formats in the process. If Big Brother feels like a throwback just five years after it was canned, it’s because the genre has moved on. It’s still early days for the series, meaning we are yet to see if its classic setup of marooned strangers being spied on around the clock still has legs. Perhaps the real question isn’t whether it’s still entertaining, but whether the housemates can emerge from the process unscathed.
Fiona Sturges is an arts writer specialising in books, music, podcasting and TV
