First there was TV, then came the idea suggested by Andy Warhol that everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. I have never quite forgiven him for this as it spawned the dreaded “Reality TV” where the outcasts of society all pile into a house and subject the world to their “hilarious” antics, or talent less nobodies queue up to sing in front of a panel in a bid to become the latest pop sensation or at least get the Christmas number one before they instantly fade into obscurity and end up appearing on endless other reality shows in a bid to claw back the fleeting fame they once experienced. Some people do go on to have a lasting career from this but they are very few and far between making the whole process pretty pointless to begin with. Nowadays reality TV is facing a bit of a backlash and a new genre has been created, “Fake” reality TV. Someone somewhere decided having a group of people playing out their lives in front of a camera was not interesting enough so instead they took real people and put them in a fake situation and filmed the results. This supposedly created genuine reactions to what was happening. The only problem is these people are not actually actors and they have already been briefed on the situation so have a preconceived idea of what is going to happen. The concept is quite interesting but I can’t help but feel that they could do more than they are currently doing. The reactions are not real enough to give the shows any real bite, realistically if you are only pretending to be in a relationship with someone and they fake break up with you are you really going to be able to act as distraught as if this had really happened?
The whole thing was, of course, spawned in the USA but as ever the UK adopted the idea and “TOWIE” was born followed closely by “Made in Chelsea” and the hilariously titled “Desperate Scousewives”. Ironically a few of the fake reality TV stars have taken part in real reality TV with members of TOWIE and Made In Chelsea being flown half way around the world and dropped in the middle of the Australian jungle surrounded by former celebrities, TV cameras and several hundreds of species of Australian wildlife and causing them to actually demonstrate reactions that are for more convincing than the ones we are used to seeing.
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