The Great Reality TV Swindle
Synopsis
One of the most audacious game show formats of modern times was invented by Nik Russian in 2001. He would organise for three teams of ten to travel the world for a year, all accommodation and transport provided, and work for a million pounds. The team that earned the most would win £100,000 each.
After holding some tests - including baking a cake on a private island in the middle of the Thames - three teams were picked, and gathered at Waterloo station in June 2002. There it emerged that funding hadn't come through, and the project was off. One team decided to stick together, made a film, got on the London news, and received a visit from Nik Russian, before slinking home in defeat.
The story was told in a thoroughly bizarre one-off programme that aired in late 2002. The show included homages from the two big reality shows of the time - a Survivor t-shirt, and an actual clip from that year's Big Brother. The attention to detail was good, but imperfect - attentive viewers will see the result of a lunchtime football match in a sequence shot in the morning.
Director Caz Gorham created a credible story, sending up the eagerness of young people to appear on television, and suggesting that not everything in these reality shows is as cut-and-dried - or as honest - as it might seem, but the show's inconsistencies left us unsure whether the story itself was true or not. As it turns out, the story was indeed true, and was revisited a couple of decades down the line in a 2023 Amazon Prime Video series, The Greatest Show Never Made.
Trivia
Nikita Russian's real name was Keith Gillard.
One thing that many people latched onto in the "is it/isn't it real?" debate was that apparently nobody had heard of the production company, Christmas Films, before. In fact the company had existed for several years, mostly making arty short films, but also the 1999 sexuality quiz, The Staying-In Show.
See also
Web links
Variety magazine write-up (via Internet Archive)
