After Reality Check: America’s Next Top Model, a three-part post-mortem on the toxic culture of the reality series America's Next Top Model, you’d think that the show’s creator Tyra Banks would run for the hills at any opportunity to remake it. But no, after three hours of swerving questions on the fat shaming, racism, public humiliation, harassment and verbal abuse that was typical of the program from 2003 onwards, Banks hints that she’s bringing ANTM back to life. “You have no idea what we have planned for cycle 25,” she tells the camera with an all-knowing smile.
This is the hypocrisy of Reality Check, a documentary promised as an insider look at the now-problematic reality TV quest to find the next supermodel. Instead, watching this documentary feels like you're doomscrolling through rage-bait in real-time. Viewers watch as the original ANTM team — comprised of Banks, network producer Ken Mok, as well as judges Jay Manuel, Miss Jay Alexander and Nigel Barker — swerve uncomfortable questions about what happened on the show in the early aughts by reciting media-trained one-liners and eye-rolls. “It was a different time,” they insist ad nauseam.
