The Lap of Luxury was a Big Brother-style reality tv show filmed for Spike TV in 2003. The format is familiar: 9 contestants living in a house together, all trying to win immunity, prevent themselves from being voted out and vying to win a $100,000 prize while facing down a smarmy host. Except... only one of them, a guy named Matt Kennedy Gould, was really a contestant. The rest were actors, playing stereotypical reality show roles. The series was scripted, heavily improvised and entirely created around Matt -- his very own Truman Show. Welcome to Joe Schmo. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Apr 24, 2012 - 55 comments

How TV show titles are picked, aka why "Friends" wasn't named "Across The Hall".
posted by reenum on Mar 19, 2012 - 74 comments

The Internet often discusses shows that died before their time. Splitsider looked at "10 Promising TV Series That Weren't Picked Up". Television Without Pity also has its "Brilliant But Cancelled" blog, taken over from the original site. [more inside]
posted by reenum on Jan 13, 2012 - 260 comments

Mother of all TV shows: [Financial Times] Russia’s latest hit, ‘Mother in Law’, makes ‘Big Brother’ look like ‘Sesame Street’.
posted by Fizz on Dec 27, 2011 - 17 comments

Playboy: The Curse of Reality TV (url/ads may be NSFW)
posted by zarq on Aug 29, 2011 - 57 comments

Why The Hills’ [new] Opening Credits Are Both Creepy and Cruel
For more can-this-really-be-an-accident marketing: This promo for the final season as compared to this earlier use of the same song.
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew on May 21, 2010 - 70 comments

A French, state-run TV channel appears to be stirring controversy by airing a documentary about a fake game show in which contestants torture eachother, called "Game of Death." Based on the well-known Stanley Milgram experiments of the 1960's that, in the wake of Nazi Germany, sought out to measure man's willingness to obey orders. [more inside]
posted by phaedon on Mar 17, 2010 - 33 comments

MTV's Jersey Shore, a Real World-style reality program centered around eight young Italian-Americans living together in a beach house, is garnering charges of racism following their use of the allegedly pejorative terms guido and the feminine counterpart guidette in advertisements. But what exactly is a guido? [more inside]
posted by joechip on Jan 3, 2010 - 232 comments

Haven't you always secretly wondered what would happen if a ninja accidentally stumbled into, say, Bill and Ted's time traveling Phone Booth and ended up somewhere around 7th century BC, only to come face-to-face with a feisty Spartan? Have you not pondered what would happen if you locked up an Apache with a Gladiator inside some sort of 21st century battle dome? Are you frustrated because you feel like there's nobody doing proper scientific studies to see what would happen when you pit two historically violent warriors that could have never actually met in real life? Worry no more people - I present to you Spike TV's newest offering - Deadliest Warrior! [more inside]
posted by Bageena on May 5, 2009 - 110 comments

Who wants to be a superhero? Forget Survivor. Forget Beauty and the Geek. This is the ultimate reality show. Who wouldn't want to see a middle-aged comic-book geeks decked out to fight crime? Apply now! Our safety depends upon it! (Maybe Peter Pan would be interested?)
posted by jdroth on Mar 15, 2006 - 22 comments

Yesterday's NYT magazine section (reg req'd) featured a profile of Jack Osbourne---whose family's show premieres its second season tomorrow---and discussed the unpleasant repercussions of his new fame: a prescription to Zoloft, a discontinued high school education and severe threats that warrant his own eye-patched bodyguard. Is this kind of exposure (especially in a reality TV context) too much for a 17 year old kid to handle?
posted by adrober on Nov 25, 2002 - 17 comments

The East Coast knows... Survivor Africa is over. You may not have noticed it ever starting... But Kim, Lex, Ethan, or Tom won. I'll let someone else spoil the surprise for those West Coast viewers.
posted by jacobw on Jan 10, 2002 - 11 comments

Last One Standing. Now this is reality tv. Just came on at 8PST on USA. About 10 people have to keep a hand on a car in order to win it. After 3 days awake, they started losing their wits and begin to imagine that they're being plotted against. What Big Brother should have been.
posted by owillis on Aug 13, 2000 - 11 comments

Big Brother, around the world... Like Survivor, it started in Holland and Germany, then spread across continental Europe, and finally to the UK and USA. And like Millionaire, the duplication of the format is a good way of distinguishing cultural differences. The British version seems more candid than its American cousin, in keeping with Channel 4's character; it's also a lot less chummy. Anyone else keeping track of the two different houses?
posted by holgate on Aug 7, 2000 - 11 comments