By now, almost every aspect of modern life has been filtered through eliminative reality TV formats. The search for love. The search for gainful employment. The universal human desire to spend more time in the company of Alan Sugar. In 2023, jaded by the emotional excesses of Love Island and the comical indignities of I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, it is amazing to remember exactly how analogue and stark the beginnings of reality TV were.
But that doesn’t mean those beginnings weren’t monumental. They were, in television terms, epoch-defining. Big Brother is set to return for a second reboot this autumn and, in the pyrotechnic light of the shows it has spawned, it’s possible that the revival will seem underwhelming. Over the course of summer 2000, the show took spectacular flight – and TV has never been quite the same since. But what was it like for the unwitting pioneers at the heart of the first Big Brother? And how did we get from there to here?
