Squid Game was one of last year’s biggest cultural phenomenons, and it seems the appetite for dog-eat-dog reality TV shows remains strong.
The social commentary on the extreme competitiveness encouraged in capitalist societies by the Korean export struck a chord with people around the world. And it’s given broadcasters new territory to explore in the competition genre, because audiences lap it up.
The Summit is a new reality show coming in 2023, Nine announced last week.
The show involves competitors attempting to reach a mountain peak as they carry an equal share of the $1 million prize money.
It will be a “thrilling tale of endurance, survival and greed”, where morals, physical limits and bonds will be tested, according to The Summit’s description.
Other compelling competition TV shows coming to Australian screens include Ten’s The Traitors and Seven’s Million Dollar Island.
Netflix is developing Squid Game: The Challenge, where hundreds of players will enter into Squid Game-inspired challenges for the chance to win $US4.56 million ($6.6 million).
Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk brushed off concerns that the streamer’s new show is missing the point of his anti-capitalist series. The steady stream of programs featuring people duking it out over money shows audiences are not yet disillusioned with the format.
Karu Balasundram, director and head of talent at Ripleys Management, told The New Daily both audiences and participants continue to be drawn to competition shows, despite the genre’s penchant for drama and backstabbing, thanks to the illusion of reality.
“There is a fair bit of scripting in reality shows, but most viewers believe that whatever they get on screen is all in real time, unpractised and not scripted,” he said.
Although money and the chance at 15 minutes of fame can be a big motivator for people to enter into these intense tests of endurance, Mr Balasundram said the genre also gives participants a chance to be themselves – or whatever version of themselves the director will allow them to show.
“[Appearing on] reality shows is acting, but you’re acting as yourself,” he said.
‘Genuinely suicidal’: The toll of competition TV
Despite their voyeuristic interest in watching other people battle for a prize, viewers aren’t blind to the toll that appearing on this brand of reality TV can have on participants.
A 2021 report on viewer response to Australian reality television prepared for the Australian Communications and Media Authority found nine in 10 Australians believe negative representations on reality dating shows could significantly affect participants’ relationships and employment prospects in real life.
Many Australians also have at least one concern about the treatment of participants on relationship-based programs, including that these programs place participants in distressing situations, exploit them, and can affect their mental health.
And reality show competitors aren’t automatically out of the woods once cameras stop rolling; those that gained attention, particularly if they were cast as the ‘villain’, have spoken up about the toll on their mental health when their return to reality is accompanied by an avalanche of public opinions on social media.
Tully Smyth, a two-time Big Brother Australia housemate, faced widespread public backlash after cheating on her real-life girlfriend with a co-star on the show in 2013.
“It was horrendous. I had no support … I had to reach out to the producers and tell them I was going to find my own psychologist and they were going to be paying the bill,” she told TV Blackbox.
Abbie Chatfield, arguably one of Australia’s most successful post-reality show stars, told TV Reload podcast last year that she was “genuinely suicidal” while her season of The Bachelor was airing in 2019.
“I was scared everyone hated me. I was scared I was going to get physically assaulted in public,” she told CelebrityKind podcast.
In contrast to shows such as Big Brother and The Bachelor, feel-good reality TV has found success while focusing on talent instead of drama.
Programs such as Lego Masters and MasterChef show that a bloodthirsty (figurative) fight to the death isn’t the only way to get ratings and fame.
But audiences still connect to competitors showing their worst colours on screen.
“Shows like Married at First Sight and Lego Masters both give us something to talk about with people,” psychotherapist and counsellor Melissa Ferrari told The Sydney Morning Herald.
“For a show like Married at First Sight it tends to be connecting on the negative, but something like MasterChef or Lego Masters is much more positive. And good or bad, it’s still offering that opportunity of connection.”
