Reality TV - How real is it?

 

There's a cooking competition on the tellie at the moment MKR (My Kitchen Rules), and watching it I am wondering just how REAL it really is.

I have been cooking for a very long time. Now I don't pretend to be an expert, far from it, god knows I don't even like it a little bit, but cook I can.

Some parts of cooking are just elementary, like what needs slow cooking and what can and should be tossed onto a flame and almost instantly pulled off again. The list of basics is quite long and for anyone thinking they might like to compete on a culinary show, well they surely would have looked up at least a few.

The idea that that there is REALLY one disaster after other is more than a little hard to believe.

I get the need to include dickheads and quirky folk and old people and youngsters. The ratings would be piss poor indeed if all the contestants were pleasant but surely they all aught be able to cook.

So REALITY TV it's not.

I guess none of the so called reality shows are remotely REAL. Could there really be a dozen or so women prepared to battle it out amongst themselves for some unknown unseen bloke and could he REALLY be that much of a narcissist? Yeh Ok that's possible but I don't reckon men like this would be easy to find in large numbers! Can regular people just jack in their jobs for months at a time to run around the world or survive on an island or build a house or repair someone else's place?

Big Brother was the jumping off point I think. And when it started, the carefully selected hodge podge of people were literally dumped into the house and left to their own devices. It was a bit of a psycho drama. Now they are given tasks that entertain (themselves not necessarily the viewers), and have odd visitors and letters from home and conjugal visits ( Ok I made that up)  and so I reckon the outcomes are also predetermined.

The tellie arguments and disasters and upsets and the odd characters are orchestrated and rehearsed and edited - not at all REAL.

I think this is just very cheap TV. No money wasted on script writing or costumes or sets or cinematography.

There is I bet an excellent reason why the ABC do not make 'em. Surely someone would be jumping up and down if the ABC spent public money making this kind of crap. And the commercial channels make it because it's cheap and catering for the lowest common denominator of viewers.

Beggars belief really that I am still watching this shit! At least I can record it and fast forward through the ads and the 'coming up next's.