A new reality series, NASCAR All In: Battle for Daytona, is like Hard Knocks for stock car racing
If you like NASCAR and/or sports documentary series that take you behind the scenes, MotorTrend has a new show for you.
How Relative Race and Churchill’s Secret Agents: The New Recruits helped shake me from complacency
Aaron Hayes writes about discovering two on-demand reality shows that made for great family viewing, and taught him something about humanity.
Disney Channel’s Bug Juice is coming back
Bug Juice, an early Disney Channel reality series, is returning to television to follow pre-teen campers. The new season is currently filming at the original location, Camp Waziyatah, in Waterford, Maine, and the original production company, Evolution Media, and original producers (Douglas Ross, Tina Gazzero Clapp, and Toni Gallagher) are returning. The Disney Channel calls …
How Vanity Fair Confidential breaks from the true-crime formula
Of the true crime, murder-mystery, pulpy shows that air on Investigation Discovery, there’s a bit of an aberration, a series that gets its name from one of the most respected institutions in journalism: Vanity Fair Confidential. The show draws its stories from the pages and archives of Vanity Fair, which are adapted and added to for the television screen by …
Doug Llewelyn is back on The People’s Court starting today
Doug Llewelyn, the original reporter on The People’s Court returns to the syndicated show today, for the 20th season of its post-Judge Wapner life.
Review: The Sex Factor, an awful reality competition
A review of XHamster’s reality competition series The Sex Factor, which is so badly produced, it makes free online porn seem like high art by comparison.
On Thanksgiving, a reality TV sensation arrives in the U.S.
An international reality TV sensation arrives in the United States on Thanksgiving day. For five hours—five! 10 if you count the immediate repeat—tomorrow, you can experience slow TV, watching a train travel 500 miles through Alaska on Railroad Alaska: Real Time Train Ride. Real Time Train Ride airs from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. ET, and then again …
America’s Funniest Home Videos’ schadenfreude is 25 years old today
A quarter of a century ago today, ABC debuted a pre-reality series that featured a man getting hit in the balls by his kid, and the world has never been the same. America’s Funniest Home Videos–now known as AFV, because what is a home video–is a show I loved and watched back in the Bob …
Summer Break: teenagers’ social media narcissism becomes social media-only reality show
A new reality show started airing this week: Summer Break follows nine pre-college, Los Angeles-area teeenagers. The catch is that the show exists only on social media, and will consist entirely of brief daily episodes and slightly less brief weekly videos that are professionally shot and edited, but will also may incorporate the endless real-time …
Behind-the-scenes of Bomb Patrol Afghanistan, reunion ends this season of G4’s exceptional series
Late last fall, G4, the TV network ostensibly about gaming, added a new reality series to its roster of original reality shows, which primarily consists of COPS knock-off Campus PD and American Ninja Warrior. The new series doesn’t seem to fit amid the reruns of Cheaters, but instead is one you could imagine Discovery airing, …
A show that actually exists: Bikini Barbershop: Jersey, which is more horrifying than it sounds
Survivor‘s Rob Cesternino had me as a guest on his podcast Friday, despite the fact that I’d partially lost my normally awkward voice, and despite the fact that I repeatedly referenced pooping in a bucket. Anyway, in the later part of our conversation, he dropped a bombshell: There’s a reality TV show called Bikini Barbershop: …
Morgan Spurlock’s reality show about failure, rejected by networks, debuts on Yahoo
Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock has a new reality series focusing on failure, and it debuted today on Yahoo! The first episode, which is basically an introduction to the concept, is now online, and in it, he says that a group of seven people are “going to help each other go after the things we’ve always …
TechStars: a fascinating series following start-up companies and their creators
Bloomberg TV isn’t exactly a place I ever expected to look for a compelling reality TV show, but it’s the home of a recently completed series: TechStars, which is named after the organization it follows. The show follows a real-life process, as TechStars has been funding and mentoring new start-ups since 2006; it says it …
An Idiot Abroad: Stephen Merchant, Ricky Gervais send Karl Pilkington around the world
A UK reality series debuting on the Science Channel tonight sends The Office and Extras creators Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s radio producer, podcasting partner, and object of ridicule Karl Pilkington to tour the seven wonders of the world. The UK series An Idiot Abroad debuts tonight in the US at 10 p.m. ET is …
TV Guide no longer knows what’s on its own channel, announces new docu-soap series
TV Guide, the magazine once know for actually informing us about what was on TV, has forgotten what aired on its own channel just three years ago. It announced today on its web site that TV Guide Network “has green-lit its first original reality series.” The problem is that the network already aired an original …
