Reality check

We’re at the start of a new season of reality TV. 

Over the coming weeks, Love Island Australia, Big Brother, and the Golden Bachelor will join The Block and The Amazing Race on our screens. And that’s just the local productions, with platforms like Hayu providing enough content from around the world to fill every minute of your day.

Australia loves a bit of reality TV. Four in every five shows commissioned in the market are unscripted, while 76% of Aussies have watched such a program. The top rated show at any time is invariably a reality or game show. 

We’re well into the third decade of our unscripted infatuation, but it feels more appropriate for our modern world than ever. It’s mindless enough to double or triple screen while viewing, while offering enough moments of heightened drama to fuel online outrage.

On one level, there’s nothing wrong with this. You need only watch the last 6 minutes of the most recent Real Housewives of London episode to know that reality TV can be gloriously entertaining. 

There’s an obvious and well-trodden path to follow here. Our obsession with reality TV has contributed to spending on adult drama falling by over 50%. This means fewer genuinely Australian stories, unless you count Krissy Marsh’s efforts to restore her Double Bay home as something uniquely Aussie. Add in global streaming platforms as an easy scapegoat, and you have the typical take.

But there’s something far larger at play. We’re essentially being served, and happily consuming, a highly dramatised version of our own world. Rather than imagining something different, or better, we’re simply reinforcing our existing reality, and often end up feeling worse about it. It’s branded as escapism, without actually escaping anything at all.

It’s unquestionably entertaining though. Just ask the Real Housewives of London.