Big Brother has recaptured reality TV’s original mission – holding a mirror up to society

Call it nostalgia, or naivety, but there’s something about the return of Big Brother UK that feels weirdly refreshing. Yes, I did use that word in relation to a 20-plus-year-old show where the words “wine bottle” and “would you like me to be the cat” don’t exactly make for fuzzy memories. But that’s not the point, really.

Big Brother UK feels like a breath of fresh air because it’s giving us something that reality TV hasn’t dared to in a long time: reality.

Yes, much of it is still produced within an inch of its life. Yes, the contestants are painfully aware of the cameras. But in the mix of all that, there are conversations and interactions that for the first time in a while, truly feel like reflections of Britain – much as the show did when it was in its heyday.

With its mix of contestants from all walks of life – upper-middle class, middle class, working class, Muslim, trans, black, black mixed-race, Asian, white, Welsh, English, Scottish, Tory, feminist, gay, disabled (the list goes on) – it has given us the sort of conversations that might otherwise be edited out of an episode of Love Island or Married at First Sight for fear of being “too political”.

Beyond the usual gobby, childish and shit-stirring archetypes (and there are plenty of those too), we’ve had a Conservative-voting NHS manager who struggles to understand poverty, a white gay man who baulks at the mention of prejudice, and a love triangle between two buttoned-up Tories and a lefty, polyamorous, freegan.

The conversations have genuinely been enlightening, particularly those headed by Trish – the self-described feminist, immigrant lefty – whose penchant for parsing the sort of topics that opportunist pundits and right-leaning white folk call “woke” is already rubbing up some other contestants the wrong way. But even those protests against “deep” chats (Paul, the boxer/security officer/resident gross-out humour clown, is particularly averse) are interesting in themselves.

They show that ultimately, when TV producers allow the public to watch a bunch of “ordinary” people try to make entertainment in their downtime between sleeping, eating and being tested by the machine behind Big Brother, some fascinating reflections of society can occur. And not just among the contestants.

When two arguably equally irritating contestants – Farida and Kerry – were the first to face the public vote in week one, most people of colour would probably guess who, out of the aforementioned white NHS manager and Muslim make-up artist, would be the first to be voted out by the public. Ding-ding: Farida. The moment that the second round of nominations (Thai model Zak vs white British Boris Johnson fan, Henry) were announced, the outcome was clear as day well before AJ Odudu and Will Best announced it over the tannoy days later.

Sure, it’s not the most scientific test in the world, but after years of being exposed not just to Big Brother, but a number of British and American reality shows, you tend to notice a pattern. In fact, some academics suggest that for similar shows, such as Survivor, viewer voting patterns are divided along racial lines.

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Studies back up the presence and impact of British prejudices among contestants too. In 2020, Dr Tom Lane from the School of Economics at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, found that in 35 series of the show (from 2000-2016) “race and age discrimination are found, with contestants more likely to nominate those of a different race and those different in age from themselves”.

Those who aren’t attuned to – or sceptical of – what it means to be a black woman in this country may not see it, but even before the first week had ended, the “angry black woman” stereotype had already begun to plague the experiences of the two black women on the show, so much that they began to retreat into themselves. Without so much as laughing with other housemates, or undertaking secret tasks given to them by Big Brother, both women have been maligned by the “everything’s too woke” crew as anger-inducing trouble makers, with one – Dylan (a DJ and amputee advocate) – going as far as angrily confronting Trish because he was nominated (not by her).

Yinrun’s experiences (a contestant who moved to the UK from Shanghai, China before going on the series) also exemplify the patronising nature of many Brits who don’t ordinarily interact with people whose first language isn’t English, or indeed East Asian people, with some contestants infantilising her when she does routine things, or avoiding her altogether, particularly at the start of the show. In all of these cases, none of the women have explicitly said what’s happening to them – but to many of us, it’s clear as day.

While that’s infuriating on many levels – I often have to pause and take a breath while watching it on catch-up – it’s also part of why watching this season has felt a bit more stimulating. Rather than pretending social prejudices and identity politics don’t run through the veins of society – Jordan was so desperate to align himself with the upper classes as a teen that he changed his accent to emulate RP in Downton Abbey, for goodness sake – it validates the experiences that many seek to downplay or ignore across the UK.

And, finally, there’s the comfort of watching people – not 19-year-old influencers and Asos models, or yassified tradesmen – sit around and talk about absolute nonsense. Or float naturally towards one another. Or even spark up a romance. It feels natural, warts and all. TV execs, take note. When devising your next reality series, can we have more of this, please?