THE REALITY OF REALITY
A new series looking at the rise...and rise...of Reality TV around the world
The Series
Believe it or not, there was a time before the reign of the Duck Dynasty, when the Jersey Shore was just a beach, and all housewives were Real Housewives.
Today reality television is a fact of culture -- not just in America but around the world. It’s no longer just a dominant form of entertainment -- increasingly, it’s our most powerful mirror. Freakshows, competitions, makeovers, social experiments, survival, the lives of rich and famous -- reality TV has reflected, distorted, and exposed our world. From its beginnings in the 1970’s through the worldwide explosion of the 1990’s and our present day, Reality has left its mark. We don’t date...or vote or aspire...the same way since. What we think of others and how we share ourselves has been utterly transformed. Is it any wonder we point our phones at ourselves, stars of our own reality show?
This new mini-series tells the story behind the scenes and through the outward aftershocks of some of the most iconic and game-changing reality television from The US and across the globe. We will see how it has been tied to the biggest cultural shifts and events and how it has traveled to and from America. Japanese formats, Koran-reading competition shows, British survival shows gone awry -- Reality may be one of the most translatable, traded, and effortlessly recomposed forms of entertainment that has ever existed.
Through it all, we get glimpses at deeper truths: The nature of fame (The Kardashians, The Surreal Life); economic crises (Pawn Stars, Storage Wars); basic human instincts (Survivor, Big Brother); conversations about love, race and sexuality (The Bachelor, The Real World); work and aspiration (Deadliest Catch, The Apprentice); failure and redemption (Intervention, Toddlers and Tiaras) and so much more. In short, everything that touches our lives -- the good, the bad and the ugly -- has passed through the prism of reality TV. Often foreshadowing, sometimes perverting, Reality has become a pervasive way we see our world and ourselves. Today, our social media feeds are versions of our own reality TV shows, while a reality star sits in the White House.
Now, we show the reality behind Reality. At times celebratory, at times sobering, this is the series for any- one and everyone who loved or just lived through the rise of Reality TV. We will pull the curtain back to see how they were made, how they changed peoples lives forever, how they went off the rails. From former stars, producers, comedians and more, we will get at the workings of it and feature never-before-seen foot- age, insider secrets, and revelations. Reality of Reality is a trip down the yellow brick road of TV to find Oz. And we will never be the same.
Sizzle
Themed Episodes
We propose a thematic approach to the series. This will allow us to pull threads that take us through time and around the world. Internationally, we can do a single episode based on the very real power of reality TV around the world or thread this into each episode. So many of the formats either originated elsewhere or became fixtures in culture everywhere.
Either way, the themes allow us to look at some of the aspects of our world as they have been refracted, distorted and utterly transformed by Reality TV.
Real Truth
Real Truth: How did Reality TV get real and steer our national conversation on some of the biggest issues in the last decades? From being Trans to living with Down Syndrome, from teen pregnancy to drug addiction, bold programming choices broke barriers and reaped rewards. Real World opened closet doors, Teen Mom’s cautionary tales hit home, and hidden cameras revealed worlds in need of change. A look at standard bearers of the genre with the biggest societal impact.
Real Love
Is love just a competition? In this episode we explore how reality went from The Dating Game to changing the dating game. From The Bachelor to Millionaire Matchmaker to Tinder, how has reality impacted our love life and the ways in which we look for our partners?
Real World
Most viewers don’t realize that many of the genre’s most popular formats were actually imports or that some our favorites have become localized, transformed and beloved everywhere. Since the early reality explosion, countries from all over the world have been exchanging and engaging with wild formats from our favorite game shows to our buzziest social experiments.
Real Fame
Endorsement deals to franchises, spin-offs to stardom, how has reality catapulted everyday people to financial, commercial, and even political success? And how has this new crop of celebs changed the fame game...and how we define “success.”
Real Family
Reality’s obsession with families dates back to a cinema verité deep dive inside “An American Family” that broke ground with its frank look at homosexuality and a marriage coming apart at the seams. Since then, Reality has shown us every iteration of social unit from social experiment wife swapping to a polygamous man and his many wives. When did reality become “family programming” and how has this impacted our future generation?
Real Bad
Table flipping and hair pulling, call-outs and brawls, reality is often at it’s best when it goes bad. But this blood-lust has seeped out into other aspects of our cultural, especially politics and the news. How did reality TV redefine - and change the line - on what it means to play dirty, act out, and blow up--on and off the screen.
Real Instinct
What happens when you pit people against each other? Human nature comes out, sometimes in its rawest and ugliest form. On an island, stripped naked, pushing to the limits of life and death, this episode finds our human instincts ripped clean and powerfully perverted by the form of reality competition television. Hilarious, scary, and revealing -- the stories of what happened when the cameras stopped filming are as gripping as what the world actually saw.
Real Consequences
Bankruptcy, divorce, jail time - beyond the camera reality stars have a life of their own, one that may not always reflect the selves they portray on TV. What happens when reality bleeds into the real world? When a reality star with a huge fan base reveals an unsavory side, or one that clashes with mainstream values, it can be a producers’ nightmare, and a network’s moment of truth.
unReal
When did Reality TV stop being real? (And when did it become too real?) In the beginning, there were lines TV producers wouldn’t cross. Then came Survivor. The Bachelor. Laguna Beach...and all those many housewives. For a while, people still believed the outrageous drama on screen was real. That Donald Trump was the most powerful, savvy businessman in the country. Now we know the truth and play along, portraying our own “enhanced” lives on curated Facebook and Instagram accounts. In a genre where many shows are more fake then real, what’s scripted, whats not, and when does it matter?
Stories through a human lens.
Part2 crafts award-winning, premium television, film and digital programming across a range of formats and platforms. Focused on stories told through a human lens, Part2 comes to every project with a people-first/story-first approach. Our company credits include the critically acclaimed series This is Life with Lisa Ling (CNN), Dark Net (Showtime), Belief with Oprah Winfrey (OWN), Scene of the Crime (ID Discovery), The Story of Cool (MSNBC), Dixie Mafia (Discovery), Polygamy USA (NatGeo), Engineering Ground Zero (NOVA), Hard Time (NatGeo), and feature films including An Honest Liar and I’ll See You In My Dreams. Since launching in 2007, Part2 has partnered with a dozen networks, delivered more than 200 hours of programming, filmed in 40 countries and earned leading awards including Emmys, IDA, Gracies and a Sundance Jury prize.
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