REALITY TV

Reality television has little to do with reality and everything to do with television form and content. Reality TV: Realism and Revelation takes the reality television phenomenon to be a significant movement within documentary and factual programming. This book analyses new and hybrid genres including observational documentaries, talk shows, game shows, docu-soaps, dramatic reconstructions, law and order programming and 24/7 formats such as Big Brother and Survivor. These programmes are both popular with audiences and heavily debated in the media; they are at the centre of heated discussions about tabloidisation, media ethics, voyeurism and the representation of the real. Through detailed case studies, this book breaks new ground by linking together two major themes: the production of realism and its relationship to revelation. It addresses ‘truth telling’, confession and the production of knowledges about the self and its place in the world.

January 2005
208 pages

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Anita Biressi is Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies at the University of Surrey, Roehampton. She is the author of Crime, Fear and the Law in True Crime Stories (2001).

Heather Nunn is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Surrey, Roehampton. She is the author of Thatcher, Politics and Fantasy: The Political Culture of Gender and Nation (2002).

‘Biressi and Nunn present a considered, well-balanced study, and make a valuable contribution to the growing literature on the reality TV phenomenon.'
– European Journal of Communication

‘The showbiz energies of popular factual entertainment have placed an instructive pressure on our sense of what "documentary" was, is and could be. Here is a measured overview, critically astute in drawing comparisons and illuminating in the use it makes of film and television history.’
– John Corner, University of Liverpool