Scripting a new reality

From humble beginnings with a house of young people nearly 20 years ago, reality TV has become a staple of modern television programming. But with 'scripted reality' the latest trend, how can we tell what's real and what's fake – and do audiences really care, asks UNA MULLALLY

USUALLY, WHEN genres morph and multiply, it’s hard to pinpoint when those changes actually occurred. But the historical arc of what became reality television is becoming clearer as we move away from the origins of what is now an all-consuming genre.

Two people are largely responsible for nearly everything we watch outside of sitcoms, drama, current affairs and sport. They aren’t Simon Cowell, Sharon Osbourne, or the boardroom of Endemol, but Mary-Ellis Bunim, a daytime drama executive from Massachusetts, and Jonathan Murray, a journalist.

Bunim and Murray knew within 20 minutes of filming The Real World, which aired on MTV in 1992, that they had something special.

Still going nearly 20 years later, the format – sticking a bunch of young people in a house and seeing what happens – spawned a revolution in television. By now, it has outstayed its welcome, but it was groundbreaking in its anthropological approach to examining relationships, sexual behaviour, substance abuse and urban living.

Bunim and Murray also pioneered the celebrity-authored reality programme with The Simple Life, which not only cemented the fame of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, but demonstrated that people would watch celebrities engaging in even more mundane, scripted activities than previously imagined.

The Simple Lifefirst aired in 2003, a year after The Osbournesbrought the fly-on-the-wall Big Brotherformat to the dinner table, and is also the direct precursor to E!'s programming, the television network that is flogging and replicating the scenario-led narratives of Keeping Up With The Kardashiansand its conveyor belt of spin-offs.

Ensemble reality television programmes blew up when The Hills, and in turn its spin-off, The City, became the most talked about shows in the US. They owe much to the legacy of Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, a mini- Hillswith the overlapping characters that was a form of "reaction TV", created in homage to the fictional teen drama The OC.

And so "scripted reality" was born, creating a middle ground between soap opera and observational documentary (ob-docs). So we now have Fade Street, Jersey Shore, The Only Way Is Essex, Made In Chelsea, and Geordie Shore.

The genre has spawned much debate about the authenticity of what people are actually watching. It’s a winning formula, combining narrative and drama with real people, press coverage and hype.

Stephen McCormack, chief executive of Straywave Media, the company behind programmes including Fade Street, Young Dumb and Living Off Mum, and Celebrity Salon, says: "The term 'reality TV' is no longer even being used in the industry anymore. You go into sub-genres.

"Is reality just using members of the public? Well, we did that with The Generation Game. Opportunity Knockswas the X Factorin the 1970s."

While McCormack's Fade Street'sratings went south after a couple of episodes, it became one of the most watched programmes on RTÉ Player online, illustrating that a younger of demographic doesn't have much interest in scheduling, in the same way that older viewers will avoid staying up until all hours to watch a series like Boardwalk Empire, and instead just buy the box set.

THE CONSUMERS

The reaction from younger and older viewers make for interesting broadcasting anthropology. Older viewers seem to be less enamoured with scripted reality, unable to buy into the genre, whereas younger viewers consume the storylines, script and character attributes in a knowing way. They’re fully aware that most of it is constructed, but are able to view it on a level that rather ironically suspends reality.

The success of X Factor– where ordinarily cynical viewers buy into sob-stories for an hour or so on a Saturday and Sunday night, fully aware that the production team are using tricks to attempt to draw out "real" emotion – shows that new reality TV is, in a strange way, esoteric.

For many discerning viewers, more used to the scotch-swilling antics of Mad Menor the web of complexity that became The Wire's storyline, switching over to Made In Chelseaor Geordie Shorethrows up the same questions again and again: "who are these people?", "how is this a television programme?" and "who watches this crap?"

"In particular with The Kardashians, you wonder 'what am I watching here?'," says Steve Carson, director of programmes at RTÉ. He sees the rise in the current crop of reality TV programmes as a consequence of the 2007 US writers' strike, from which TV drama found it difficult to recover and during which the television networks realised how cheap and useable reality TV was as an alternative.

According to audience profiling research (such as that carried out by thinkbox.tv), the majority of consumers of the new era of reality television, similar to soap opera audiences, are young women and teenagers. Women's gossip magazines are laden with tales of the Kardashians and guides to cast members of Made In Chelsea, providing valuable press for the programmes.

One avid reality-TV fan is Vicki Notaro, 25, whose job as deputy editor of Irish teenage magazine Kissis deeply rooted in pop culture. "I'm under no illusions that it is scripted," she says. "It doesn't make it any less enjoyable."

Notaro says there is an aspirational element to the current crop of programming and that the E! channel, especially the Kardashian franchise, takes up much of her viewing time. She also notes – as many in the industry do – that Ireland and the UK could be ripe for a similar format, “If we had a really interesting Irish celebrity who was willing to put their whole life and family on TV, it would work.

"On Fade Street, you didn't get to know the characters, there were too many of them. Stuff like The Only Way Is Essexand Made In Chelsea, you know they [the characters] have a history," adding

"If Vogue [Williams, the breakout star of Fade Street] got her own spin-off show, people would aspire to her."

THE FUTURE

One thing that focuses producers when pitching programmes is the “mood of the nation”. At the moment, nobody wants to watch programmes about people flashing cash, and you’d need a miracle to get a property show off the ground. McCormack says that programming with a redemptive feel is getting the green light.

Carson believes that even though scripted programmes have consumed much of reality TV, that there’s still a role for realness. “It all comes back to authenticity. People will have a bit of fun if they see scenes with characters that are cartoonish and outlandish, but they have to have an authentic feel.”

RTÉ's Dirty Old Townsor Operation Transformationare two examples of shows that "leave something behind", Carson says, so that when the cameras are switched off, something has actually altered as a consequence of filming.

And is scripted reality here to stay?

McCormack thinks so, in some form or another. “There are only eight stories in Greek drama and we’re still going. It’s not like people stop writing books,” he says. All these [programme formats] are only trends anyway. But I do think lifestyle reality is here to stay.

“It’s about putting normal people in weird environments or weird people in normal environments. It’s extremely simple.”

Life lessons: what we can learn from reality TV

Fade Street:

Reality life: At an invite-only party for Stellarmagazine in Krystle nightclub, Fade Street'sDani invites her colleagues from the tattoo studio, they blag their way past the guestlist guard and proceed to cause a ruckus with drunken, uncouth behaviour, leading to their ejection from the club.

Real life: Cool tattooed hardmen wouldn't be caught dead in Krystle given the distinct lack of spit and/ or sawdust.

Life lesson: Know your environment. Everyone knows that an invite to a velvet-roped bash means +1, not +loadsofblokes.

Jersey Shore

Reality life: The cast make subjects of Ibiza Uncoveredlook like Pioneers and seem to get arrested at the end of each episode for being drunk and disorderly or giving some tight-shirted man a box in the jaw.

Real life:The levels of drunkenness in Jersey Shoreare not too dissimilar from young Irish people's consumption. So, eh, hmm . . .

Life lesson: Lay off the steroids and bring some Rescue Remedy to the club if people are getting stroppy.

Made In Chelsea

Reality life:Diamond-mining heir Francis Boulle seems to have it all – good looks, charm, wads of cash – yet his dates never seem to work out as planned.

Real life:Diamond-mining heirs don't tend to look like 12-year-olds around these parts.

Life lesson: Money can't buy you love.

My Monkey Baby

Reality life:Strange Americans replace children with baby monkeys.

Real life: Dressing a monkey in a Babygro would get you some seriously odd looks at Mum and Baby cinema screenings.

Life lesson: Get a dog.