The other day I had a very dispiriting conversation with a TV industry insider. It turns out that everything you see on reality TV is fake.
It’s the ‘everything’ part that really bothered me. Obviously, we all sort of know that most TV is faked: that close-ups on wildlife documentaries are sometimes filmed in zoos and that the meerkat they pretend is the same meerkat is actually three different meerkats; that the chance meetings with colourful characters and experts are all prearranged and that when they answer the door and act surprised it’s often the third or fourth take; that the glamorous parties and realistic, totally unstilted dialogue on Made in Chelsea wouldn’t happen if the cameras weren’t there; and so on. But some things I thought were sacred.
Storage Hunters, for example. It had simply never occurred to me that, when the man cuts the chain with the bolt cutter, the tarpaulin is pulled off, and the storage locker for which the successful bidders have paid just $300 contains a Riva speedboat, an original copy of the US constitution, Neil Armstrong’s space helmet and a jar of 1933 double eagle gold coins, there’s a possibility that at least one of these items might have been put there beforehand by the production crew.
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