Dating reality shows

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Criticism [ edit ]

Like other games, the outcomes of this activities are open to rigging (analogous to match-fixing in football ), leading to missed matches and possibly unhappiness among the participants. These programs have also been criticised for complicating courtship with needless public expectation. In spite of this, some programs have produced episodes that portray follow-ups of unions forged therein, possibly with offspring.

Origins [ edit ]

Popular dating game shows were an innovation of television producer Chuck Barris in the 1970s. The Dating Game . Barris's first, put one unmarried man behind a screen to ask questions of three women who are potential mates, or one woman versus three men – thus hearing their answers and voices but not seeing them during the gameplay, although the audience could see the contestants. The various suitors were able to describe their rivals in uncomplimentary ways, which made the show work well as a general devolution of dignity. Questions were often obviously rigged to get ridiculous responses, or be obvious allusions to features of the participants' private areas.

Types [ edit ]

The Newlywed Game . by contrast, another Barris show, had recently married couples competing to answer questions about each other's preferences. The couple who knew each other the best would win the game; sometimes others got divorced. Once, someone divorced after appearing on The Newlywed Game got a "second chance" on The Dating Game . Gimmicks were the lifeblood of all such shows, which drew criticisms for instigating disaffections that could not have been effected.

The genre waned for a while but it was later revived by The New Dating Game and the UK version Blind Date . and the original shows were popular in reruns. unusual for any game show. Cable television revived some interest in these shows during the 1980s and 1990s, and eventually new shows began to be made along the old concepts. Variations featuring LGBT contestants began to appear on a few specialty channels.

Other shows focused on the conventional blind date. where two people were set up and then captured on video, sometimes with comments or subtitles that made fun of their dating behaviour. He Said, She Said focused not on setting up the date, but on comparing the couple's different impressions afterwards, and for their cooperation offering to fund a second date. These resembled the reality shows that began to emerge at about the same time in the 1990s.

A completely new type of dating show merged the format with the reality game show and produced shows where the emphasis was on realistic actions and tensions, but which used less realistic scenarios than the traditional blind date:

Temptation Island . where long-standing heterosexual couples were deliberately separated and made to watch each other's mates interacting romantically on and after dates, making extensive use of video which is the only means by which they could communicate on the island.

The Fifth Wheel . in which four people, two of one sex and two of another, are allowed to meet and bond to an extent, before a "fifth wheel," a person of one of either gender, but always a heterosexual, enters and attempts to break up the equilibrium.

Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? . which actually set up a real marriage, and put women in the situation of vying to marry a millionaire bachelor. The show turned into a major embarrassment for Fox. which aired the series. Soon after the couple married, the husband was found to have a domestic violence record. Female contestant Darva Conger quickly had the marriage annulled. Charges of economic materialism or demeaning to the woman were also levelled against the program.

Joe Millionaire . which did likewise, with the twist that the bachelor was reputed to be a millionaire, but was in fact a blue collar worker, although the cash prize offered by surprise at the end eventually made the deceptive scenario a bit less abusive.

The Bachelor . where a single man got a chance to choose from a pool of 25 women, with eliminations over a period of several weeks; and The Bachelorette . which reversed the gender roles from The Bachelor . In the first two seasons of The Bachelorette . the last woman eliminated from the dating pool in the previous season of The Bachelor was given the opportunity to "turn the tables".

Commonalities [ edit ]

Some common threads run through these shows. When participants are removed, it is usually done one at a time to drag out the action and get audience sympathy for specific players. In shows involving couples, there is a substantial incentive to break up any of the existing relationships. In shows involving singles. there is a mismatch of numbers ensuring constant competition. This creates the action, tension and humiliation when someone is rejected. There are also reports of mercenary practice, that is, members of one sex paid to participate in the game to attain balance of sex ratio.

Series involving gay and bisexual contestants [ edit ]

The first gay version of these more realistic shows to receive mainstream attention was Boy Meets Boy . with a format similar to that of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette . The show featured an unusual plot twist: eight of the men from the show's original dating pool were actually heterosexual men pretending to be homosexual; one important part of the plot was whether the gay contestant would be able to recognize the heterosexual men.

Some gay and straight romances have been sparked on the other reality game shows. suggesting that they too may really be "dating shows" in disguise. But any social situation has the potential to result in romance, especially work. The first dating show to regularly incorporate bisexual contestants was MTV series A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila . which included both male and female contestants vying for the affections of the show's star, internet star Tila Tequila. who is bisexual .

Modern innovations [ edit ]

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, a new wave of dating shows began airing in U. S. syndication that were more sexually suggestive than their earlier counterparts, including shows such as Blind Date . Elimidate and The Fifth Wheel . which often pushed boundaries of sexual content allowed on broadcast television. As the 2000s progressed, the ratings for many of these shows began to decline, a situation exacerbated by the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy in 2004 as production companies out of fear of being imposed with monetary penalties by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for indecent content began censoring dating shows (and many syndicated programs targeted at the 18-49 demographic, in general) to levels in which even profanities typically permissible on television were edited out of episodes.

Since then, the dating game show has virtually died off from television syndication, though cable television networks such as VH1 have continued to air dating shows with content similar to that of the syndicated dating shows of the late 1990s and early 2000s and major over-the-air broadcast networks have tried, often with marginal success, to use dating shows that are less risque compared to those shows. Attempts to revive the dating show in syndication first came in 2011, when Excused and Who Wants to Date a Comedian? both debuted; this was followed in 2012 by NBCUniversal Television Distribution 's sale of reruns of the Game Show Network series Baggage into syndication; all three shows were dropped in September 2013, removing the genre from broadcast syndication once more.

A sobering caveat of the power of television and romance in combination came when a popular dating variant of the talk show, inviting secret admirers to meet on the stage, backfired on the Jenny Jones show. The admirer was a homosexual friend of a heterosexual man who was so outraged after the taping that he later murdered the admirer. [ 1 ] The secret admirer variant of the talk show has remained popular, it continued be used on Oprah . but with less emotionally loaded surprises, and much more careful checking of the guests' backgrounds and attitudes; occasional episodes of Maury combine this format, though not always in a direct manner, with reveals of high school classmates who were considered to be unattractive as teenagers reuniting with their former school friends or tormentors as adults, after changing their image to become more physically attractive.

Advantages to Viewers

Reality shows can teach you that you can overcome tough obstacles with family support, determination, hard work and confidence. For example, A&E's "Intervention" gives viewers stories of people from different backgrounds who suffered setbacks and addictions, but who eventually get sober or drug free.

Disadvantages to Viewers

Some reality shows encourage poor behavior. For example, some reality dating shows do not focus on developing mature and loving relationships, but just emphasize the sexual aspects of dating. This can teach young people to equate casual sex with love.

Advantages to Participants

Reality show allow participants to showcase and develop their talents. For example, MTV's "Made" allows teenagers to be coached by established people in the fields they want to be in. They receive specific lessons, constructive criticism and encouragement.

Disadvantages to Participants

Reality TV Shows

Reality TV arose as a named genre of programming in the 1990s with the introduction of a number of series that featured the unscripted interactions of ordinary people, as opposed to actors or celebrities. Early reality series were a unique form, but the genre has expanded to include shows that infuse other genres-game shows, documentaries, etc.-with unscripted elements.

The earliest reality series were ground-breaking in that they stepped outside the conventions of traditional programming in an attempt to focus on the real lives of their characters. MTV's The Real World, arguably the first modern American reality series, featured a group of non-actor young people living together in a house; the group's daily activities were filmed via cameras scattered throughout the house, and there was no script or plan for how the events in the house would play out.

Very quickly, aspects of reality TV were adopted into other types of shows. Survivor merged reality TV with the game-show genre; participants in the show were engaged in a competition, but their interactions were filmed and presented in manner that emphasized the unscripted drama between them. This hybrid reality-game show became a very popular subgenre, and it eventually encompassed a wide range of competitions, including those involving music, dance, cooking and weight loss.

The reality formula eventually evolved to include unscripted shows that claimed to present the every-day lives of celebrities. Other reality series followed the professional-and, to a certain degree, personal-lives of ordinary people such as police officers, fishermen or others in hazardous occupations. The reality genre also sometimes connects itself with fiction genres, as in paranormal-investigation series, where real-life investigators go about their business and the show attempts to use their activities to generate suspense.

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Опубликовано: 7 мая 2014 г.

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Reality television

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents unscripted situations and actual occurrences, and often features a previously unknown cast. The genre often highlights personal drama and conflict to a much greater extent than other unscripted television such as documentary shows. The genre has various standard tropes, such as reality TV confessionals used by cast members to express their thoughts, which often double as the shows' narration. In competition-based reality shows, a notable subset, there are other common elements such as one participant being eliminated per episode, a panel of judges, and the concept of immunity from elimination.

The genre may have begun in earnest in 1991 with the Dutch series Nummer 28 . which was the first show to bring together strangers and record their interactions. [ 1 ] It then exploded as a phenomenon in the late 1990s and early 2000s with the global success of the series Survivor and Big Brother . [ 2 ] These shows and a number of others (usually also competition-based) became global franchises, spawning local versions in dozens of countries. Reality television as a whole has become a fixture of television programming. In the United States. various channels have retooled themselves to focus on reality programs, most famously MTV. which began in 1981 as a music video pioneer, before switching to a nearly all-reality format in the early 2000s.

There are grey areas around what is classified as reality television. Documentaries. television news. sports television. talk shows and traditional game shows are not classified as reality television, even though they contain elements of the genre, such as unscripted situations and sometimes unknown participants. Other genres that predate the reality television boom have sometimes been retroactively grouped into reality TV, including hidden camera shows such as Candid Camera (1948), talent-search shows such as The Original Amateur Hour (1948), documentary series about ordinary people such as the Up Series (1964), high-concept game shows such as The Dating Game (1965), home improvement shows such as This Old House (1979) and court shows featuring real-life cases such as The People's Court (1981).

Reality television has faced significant criticism since its rise in popularity. Much of the criticism has centered around the use of the word "reality", and such shows' attempt to present themselves as a straightforward recounting of events that have occurred. Critics have argued that reality television shows do not present reality in ways both implicit (participants being placed in artificial situations) and deceptive or even fraudulent, such as misleading editing, participants being coached in what to say or how to behave, storylines generated ahead of time, and scenes being staged or re-staged for the cameras. Other criticisms of reality television shows include that they are intended to humiliate or exploit participants (particularly on competition shows), that they make celebrities out of untalented people who do not deserve fame, and that they glamorize vulgarity and materialism.

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History [ edit ]

Television formats portraying ordinary people in unscripted situations are almost as old as the television medium itself. Producer-host Allen Funt 's Candid Camera . in which unsuspecting people were confronted with funny, unusual situations and filmed with a hidden camera, first aired in 1948, and is often seen as a prototype of reality television programming. [ 3 ] [ 4 ]

1940s–1950s [ edit ]

Precedents for television that portrayed people in unscripted situations began in the late 1940s. Queen for a Day (1945–1964) was an early example of reality-based television. The 1946 television game show Cash and Carry sometimes featured contestants performing stunts. Debuting in 1948, Allen Funt 's hidden camera Candid Camera show (based on his previous 1947 radio show, Candid Microphone ) broadcast unsuspecting ordinary people reacting to pranks. [ 5 ] In 1948, talent search shows Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour and Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts featured amateur competitors and audience voting.

In the 1950s, game shows Beat the Clock and Truth or Consequences involved contestants in wacky competitions, stunts, and practical jokes. Confession was a crime/police show which aired from June 1958 to January 1959, with interviewer Jack Wyatt questioning criminals from assorted backgrounds. [ 6 ]

The radio series Nightwatch (1951–1955) tape-recorded the daily activities of Culver City. California police officers. The series You Asked for It (1950–1959) incorporated audience involvement by basing episodes around requests sent in by postcard from viewers.

1960s–1970s [ edit ]

First broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1964, the Granada Television television documentary Seven Up! . broadcast interviews with a dozen ordinary 7-year-olds from a broad cross-section of society and inquired about their reactions to everyday life. Every seven years, a film documented the life of the same individuals during the intervening period, titled the Up Series. episodes include "7 Plus Seven", "21 Up", etc.; it is still ongoing. The series was structured as a series of interviews with no element of plot. However, it did have the then-new effect of turning ordinary people into celebrities.

The first reality show in the modern sense may have been the series The American Sportsman . which ran from 1965 to 1986 on ABC in the United States. [ 7 ] [ 8 ] A typical episode featured one or more celebrities, and sometimes their family members, being accompanied by a camera crew on an outdoor adventure, such as hunting, fishing, hiking, scuba diving, rock climbing, wildlife photography, horseback riding, race car driving, and the like, with most of the resulting action and dialogue being unscripted, except for the narration.

Another precursor may be considered Mutual of Omaha. s Wild Kingdom which aired from 1963 through 1988. This show featured zoologist Marlin Perhins travelig across the globe and illustrating the wide variety of animal life on the planet. Though mostly a travelogue, it was popular in syndication and new episodes were produced through the eighties. [ 9 ]

In the 1966 Direct Cinema film Chelsea Girls . Andy Warhol filmed various acquaintances with no direction given; the Radio Times Guide to Film 2007 stated that the film was "to blame for reality television". [ 10 ]

The 12-part 1973 PBS series An American Family showed a nuclear family (filmed in 1971) going through a divorce; unlike many later reality shows, it was more or less documentary in purpose and style. In 1974 a counterpart program, The Family . was made in the UK, following the working class Wilkins family of Reading. [ 11 ] Other forerunners of modern reality television were the 1970s productions of Chuck Barris. The Dating Game . The Newlywed Game and The Gong Show . all of which featured participants who were eager to sacrifice some of their privacy and dignity in a televised competition. [ 12 ] In 1978, Living in the Past recreated life in an Iron Age English village.

1980s–1990s [ edit ]

Producer George Schlatter capitalized on the advent of videotape to create Real People . a surprise hit for NBC, which ran from 1979 to 1984. The success of Real People was quickly copied by ABC with That's Incredible . a stunt show co-hosted by Fran Tarkenton. In Canada. Thrill of a Lifetime . a fantasies-fulfilled reality show that originally ran from 1982 to 1988 and was revived from 2001 to 2003.

In 1985, underwater cinematographer Al Giddings teamed with former Miss America Shawn Weatherly on the NBC series Oceanquest . which chronicled Weatherly's adventures scuba diving in various exotic locales. Weatherly was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in informational programming. [ 13 ]

COPS . which first aired in the spring of 1989 on Fox and came about partly due to the need for new programming during the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike. [ 14 ] showed police officers on duty apprehending criminals; it introduced the camcorder look and cinema verite feel of much of later reality television.

The series Nummer 28 . which aired on Dutch television in 1991, originated the concept of putting strangers together in the same environment for an extended period of time and recording the drama that ensued. Nummer 28 also pioneered many of the stylistic conventions that have since become standard in reality television shows, including a heavy use of soundtrack music and the interspersing of events on screen with after-the-fact "confessionals" recorded by cast members, that serve as narration. One year later, the same concept was used by MTV in its new series The Real World . Nummer 28 creator Erik Latour has long claimed that The Real World was directly inspired by his show; [ 15 ] however, the producers of The Real World have stated that their direct inspiration was An American Family . [ 16 ]

According to television commentator Charlie Brooker. this type of reality television was enabled by the advent of computer-based non-linear editing systems for video (such as produced by Avid Technology ) in 1989. These systems made it easy to quickly edit hours of video footage into a usable form, something that had been very difficult to do before (film, which was easy to edit, was too expensive to shoot enough hours of footage with on a regular basis). [ 17 ]

The series Expedition Robinson . created by television producer Charlie Parsons, which first aired in 1997 in Sweden (and was later produced in a large number of other countries as Survivor ), added to the Nummer 28 / Real World template the idea of competition and elimination, in which cast members/contestants battled against each other and were removed from the show until only one winner remained (these shows are now sometimes called elimination shows).

Changing Rooms . a program that began in 1996, showed couples redecorating each other's houses, and was the first [ citation needed ] reality show with a self-improvement or makeover theme.

The 1980s and 1990s were also a time when tabloid talk shows came to rise, many of which featured the same types of unusual or dysfunctional guests that would later become popular as cast members of reality shows.

2000s [ edit ]

Reality television saw an explosion of global popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the successes of the Big Brother and Survivor/Expedition Robinson franchises.

In the United States, reality television programs experienced a temporary decline in viewership in 2001, leading some entertainment industry columnists [ who? ] to speculate that the genre was a temporary fad that had run its course. [ citation needed ] Reality shows that suffered from low ratings included The Amazing Race (although the show has since recovered), Lost (unrelated to the better-known serial drama of the same name ) and The Mole . [ 18 ]

However, this proved not to be the case for stronghold shows Survivor and American Idol that both topped the U. S. season-average television ratings in the 2000s: Survivor led the ratings in 2001–02. and Idol emerged as the program with the longest hold on the No. 1-rank in the American television ratings, dominating over all other primetime programs in the ratings for seven consecutive years, from 2004–2005 to 2010–2011 television seasons.

Internationally, a number of shows created in the late 1990s and 2000s have had massive global success. At least nine reality-television franchises have had over 30 international adaptations each: the singing competition franchises Idols . Star Academy and The X Factor . and other competition franchises Survivor/Expedition Robinson . Big Brother . Got Talent . Top Model . MasterChef and Dancing with the Stars . Several "reality game shows " from the same period have had even greater success, including Deal or No Deal . Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and Weakest Link . with over 50 international adaptions each (all but one of these franchises, Top Model . was created by either British producers or the Dutch production company Endemol ).

In India, the competition show Indian Idol was the most popular television program for its first six seasons. [ 19 ]

The 2000s saw the launches of three television channels devoted exclusively to reality television: Fox Reality in the United States, which existed from 2005 to 2010; Global Reality Channel in Canada. which lasted two years from 2010 to 2012; and Zone Reality in the United Kingdom, which operated from 2002 to 2009). In addition, several other cable channels. including Bravo. A&E. E!. TLC. History. VH1 and MTV. changed their programming to mostly comprise reality television series during the 2000s. [ 20 ]

During the early part of the 2000s, network executives expressed concern that reality-television programming was limited in its appeal for DVD reissue and syndication. DVDs for reality shows in fact sold briskly; Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County . The Amazing Race . Project Runway and America's Next Top Model all ranked in the top DVDs sold on Amazon. com. and in the mid-2000s, DVDs of The Simple Life outranked scripted shows like The O. C. and Desperate Housewives . Syndication, however, has indeed proven problematic; shows such as Fear Factor . COPS and Wife Swap in which each episode is self-contained, can indeed be rerun fairly easily, but usually only on cable television and/or during the daytime ( COPS and America's Funniest Home Videos being exceptions). Season-long competitions such as The Amazing Race . Survivor and America's Next Top Model generally perform more poorly and usually must be rerun in marathons to draw the necessary viewers to make it worthwhile (even in these cases, it is not always successful: the first ten seasons of Dancing with the Stars were picked up by GSN in 2012 and was run in marathon format, but experienced very poor ratings). Another option is to create documentaries around series including extended interviews with the participants and outtakes not seen in the original airings; the syndicated series American Idol Rewind is an example of this strategy.

COPS has had huge success in syndication, direct response sales and DVD. A Fox staple since 1989, COPS has, as of 2013 (when it moved to cable channel Spike ), outlasted all competing scripted police shows. Another series that has seen wide success is "Cheaters ", which has been running since 2000 in the U. S. and is syndicated in over 100 countries worldwide.

In 2007, Internet entrepreneur Joel Comm hosted and produced what is believed to be the world's first competitive Internet reality show, The Next Internet Millionaire. Billed as The Apprentice meets YouTube, twelve contestants competed for a $25,000 cash prize. The show received an honorary Webby Award in its category in 2008. [ 21 ]

2010s [ edit ]

In 2010, The Tester became the first reality television show aired over a video game console. [ 22 ]

By 2012, many of the long-running reality television show franchises in the United States, such as American Idol . Dancing with the Stars and The Bachelor . had begun to see declining ratings. [ 23 ] However, reality television as a whole remained highly durable in the U. S. with hundreds of shows across many channels. In 2012 New York Magazine's Vulture blog published a humorous Venn diagram showing popular themes across American reality shows then running, including shows set in the U. S. states of Alaska. Louisiana and Texas. shows about cakes, weddings and pawnbrokers. and shows, usually competition-based, whose title includes the word "Wars". [ 24 ]

The Voice . a singing competition franchise created by John de Mol that started in 2010, is the newest highly successful reality television franchise, with almost 50 international adaptations.

Duck Dynasty . a reality series featuring the Robertson family that founded Duck Commander. in 2013 became the most popular reality series in U. S. cable television history. Its fourth season premiere was viewed by nearly 12 million viewers in the United States, most of which were in rural markets; its rural audience share has ranked in the 30s, an extremely high number for any series, broadcast or cable. [ 25 ]

Subgenres [ edit ]

The genre of reality television consists of various subgenres. There are eight subgenres of reality television as proposed by Murray and Ouellette (2009). [ 26 ] These subgenres are: gamedocs, dating programs, makeover programs, docusoaps, talent contests, court programs, reality sitcoms, and celebrity variations of other programs.

Others such as Hill, Weibull, and Nilsson (2007, p. 18) [ 27 ] suggest that five subgenres or categories exist. They suggest the following: infotainment, docusoap, lifestyle, reality game shows, and lifestyle experiment programs as main categories of reality TV. Nabi et al. (2006, p. 433) [ 28 ] on the other hand, proposed a categorization based on six main topics: romance, crime, informational, reality-drama, competition/game, and talent. Similarly, Fitzgerald (2003) proposed a similar categorization focusing on talent and survival competitions, personal makeover, home makeover, get-rich-quick schemes, docudramas, and "Mr. Right" programs. [ 29 ]

Still others suggest that categorization can be determined by either narrative or performation reality. [ 30 ] Narrative reality television is based on "entertaining the viewers by an authentic or staged rendition of extraordinary, real, or close-to-reality events with non-prominent actors, whereas formats providing a stage for uncommon performances with a direct impact on the participants' lives fall into the category of performative reality TV." [ 31 ] From the perspective of Klaus and Lucke,"docusoaps" portray people in their usual living environment and "reality soaps" bring them in a new, uncommon environment." [ 31 ]

A variety of what could be called "adventure" reality television places people in wild and challenging natural settings. The genre includes such shows as Survivorman . Man vs. Wild . Naked Castaway . Naked and Afraid and Get Out Alive with Bear Grylls .

Documentary-style [ edit ]

In many reality television programs, camera shooting and footage editing give the viewer the impression that they are passive observers following people going about their daily personal and professional activities; this style of filming is sometimes referred to as fly on the wall or factual television. Story "plots" are often constructed via editing or planned situations, with the results resembling soap operas – hence the terms docusoap and docudrama . Documentary-style programs give viewers a private look into the lives of the subjects.

Within documentary-style reality television are several subcategories or variants:

Special living environment Some documentary-style programs place cast members, who in most cases previously did not know each other, in artificial living environments; The Real World is the originator of this style. In almost every other such show, cast members are given specific challenges or obstacles to overcome. Road Rules . which started in 1995 as a spin-off of The Real World . started this pattern: the cast traveled across the country guided by clues and performing tasks. Big Brother is probably the best known program of this type in the world, with around 50 international versions having been produced. Another example of a show in this category The 1900 House . involves historical re-enactment with cast members hired to live and work as people of a specific time and place. 2001's Temptation Island achieved some notoriety by placing several couples on an island surrounded by single people in order to test the couples' commitment to each other. U8TV: The Lofters combined the "special living environment" format with the "professional activity" format noted below; in addition to living together in a loft. each member of the show's cast was hired to host a television program for a Canadian cable channel. Soap-opera style Although the term "docusoap" has been used for many documentary-style reality television shows, there have been shows that have deliberately tried to mimic the appearance and structure of soap operas. Such shows often focus on a close-knit group of people and their shifting friendships and romantic relationships. One highly influential such series was the American 2004–2006 series Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County . which attempted to specifically mimic the primetime soap opera The O. C. . which had begun airing in 2003. Laguna Beach had a more cinematic feel than any previous reality television show, through the use of higher-quality lighting and cameras, voice-over narration instead of on-screen "confessionals", and slower pacing. [ 32 ] Laguna Beach led to several spinoff series, most notably the 2006–2010 series The Hills . It also inspired various other series, including the highly successful British series The Only Way Is Essex and Made in Chelsea . and the Australian series Freshwater Blue . Due to their cinematic feel, many of these shows have been accused of being pre-scripted, moreso than other reality television shows have. The producers of The Only Way Is Essex and Made in Chelsea have admitted to coaching cast members on what to say in order to draw more emotion from each scene, although they insist that the underlying stories are real. [ 33 ] Another highly successful group of soap-opera-style shows is the Real Housewives franchise, which began with The Real Housewives of Orange County in 2006 and has since spawned nearly twenty other series, in the U. S. and internationally. The franchise has an older cast and different personal dynamics than that of Laguna Beach and its imitators, as well as lower production values, but similarly is meant to resemble scripted soap operas – in this case, the television series Desperate Housewives and Peyton Place . A notable subset of such series focus on a group of women who are romantically connected to male celebrities; these include Basketball Wives (2010), Love & Hip Hop (2011) and Hollywood Exes (2012).

Reality legal programming [ edit ]

Another subgenre of reality television is "reality legal programming." These are programs that center on real-life legal matters.