WHEN I became an actor, reality television didn’t exist in the way that it does now. I suppose the first such programme was probably Candid Camera, in which practical jokes were played on unsuspecting members of the public and secretly filmed for our entertainment.
The first serious attempt to show ‘real life’ on a medium that had until then, virtually exclusively, trodden the separate paths of news and current affairs on the one hand and drama and entertainment on the other – was the remarkable ‘Seven Up’ in 1964, which interviewed a group of seven year olds from a variety of backgrounds and then repeated the process with the same group every seven years thereafter.
This is firmly at what we might describe as the serious end of the reality TV spectrum. At the non-serious entertainment end are those dating programmes and search for a singer, model, chef, entrepreneur programmes which are, shall we say, much more manipulated than the fly on the wall programmes. And then there are the Essex and Chelsea lot. They have very high-viewing figures and supposedly show us real young people interacting socially and romantically in their respective environments. They are not actors pretending to be real people; they are real people pretending to be themselves in situations with their real circle of friends that probably would never have happened had the production team not offered up scenarios for them to live their real lives in.
I can only imagine that the ‘cast’ get confused themselves and, indeed, some very understandably don’t stay the course as a result. In the case of the Chelsea programme, their motives for participating are interesting. As they are all clearly wealthy young folk, it can’t be just the money. Maybe to their jaded 21st Century palates, it may just be for the heck of it.
Then there are the programmes where ‘celebrities’ are placed in a variety of challenging positions and the audience is invited to delight in their achievements or humiliation, depending on the show.
The added attraction is that the participants are known already to the viewers, so provoking a spot of the good old schadenfreude.
But we actors, singers, sportsmen or public figures are all entertainers in our way and must adjust our skills for the times we live in.
As a young actor, I never foresaw participating in Come Dine with Me – or indeed any other reality programme!
