16 Facts About Reality series

Reality series television has faced significant criticism since its rise in popularity.

The Reality series You Asked for It incorporated audience involvement by basing episodes around requests sent in by postcard from viewers.

The 15-episode Reality series is credited with starting the career of Sheena Easton, who was selected to appear in the episode showing an aspiring pop singer trying to enter the music business.

The production team from the original series later created the popular reality shows Strictly Come Dancing, Location, Location, Location, and the revamped MasterChef, among others.

In 2007, the web series The Next Internet Millionaire appeared; it was a competition show based in part on The Apprentice, and was billed as the world's first Internet reality show.

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Television development across all genres was impacted in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many reality competition series to suspend production, until such time that production could recommence with appropriate health and safety protocols approved by local authorities.

One example is shows about people with disabilities or people who have unusual physical circumstances, such as the American Reality series Push Girls and Little People, Big World, and the British programmes Beyond Boundaries, Britain's Missing Top Model, The Undateables and Seven Dwarves.

The format of each season changes, however the main premise of the Reality series involves a daily challenge, nomination process and elimination round.

Globally syndicated format Dragons' Den shows a group of wealthy investors choosing whether or not to invest in a Reality series of pitched startup companies and entrepreneurial ventures.

The British Reality series Show Me the Monet offers a twist in which artworks' artistic value, rather than their financial value, is appraised by a panel of judges, who determine whether each one will be featured at an exhibition.

British TV Reality series Wife Swap, which began in 2003, and has had many spinoffs in the UK and other countries, is a notable example.

Popstars, which debuted in 1999, may have been the first such show, while the Idol Reality series has been the longest-running and, for most of its run, the most popular such franchise.

Reality series television has received criticism in Britain and the United States for its ideological relationship with surveillance societies and consumerism.

Reality series television has the potential to turn its participants into national celebrities, at least for a short period.

Not all reality-television-style mockumentary series are comedic: the 2013 American series Siberia has a science fiction-horror bent, while the 2014 Dutch series The First Years is a drama.

The Reality series Jackass spawned five feature films, starting with Jackass: The Movie in 2002.