Noughties Reality Shows That Wouldnt Fly Today

The early Noughties saw dozens of reality shows air that pushed the boundaries in order to draw in big viewer numbers. 

From the controversial There's Something About Miriam to Fat Families and Supersized vs Superskinny - many of the concepts simply wouldn't be acceptable in today's world.

One of the most headline garnering shows of the time in the US was America's Next Top Model which aired from 2003 to 2018. 

Soon a new documentary will examine the ups and downs of the juggernaut that made a presenting powerhouse. 

It explores how the show shaped fashion and pop culture, and asks whether in hindsight, it was a much darker process than viewers imagined.

But there were plenty of other wild and eyebrow-raising shows around that time that would NEVER be made now...

There's Something About Miriam 

There's Something About Miriam was one of the most controversial shows of the early 2000s. 

The 2003 Sky One show saw six 'typical lads' enter a dating contest to woo  for a £10,000 prize and romantic yacht trip. 

However, the cruel twist of the show was that the contestants weren't told that Miriam was and hadn't undergone gender-affirming surgery until after the winner was announced - and after the men had flirted with her and even filmed intimate scenes together. 

Despite being promised the 'adventure of a lifetime', the boys sued the show and prevent it from airing, eventually settling for an amount rumoured to be around £500,000. 

The dating show and its impact have since been explored in a  documentary Miriam: Death Of A Reality star, which explores the life and of Miriam Rivera.

Miriam passed away in in 2019 aged just 38, and her death was ruled a suicide by the authorities - although her husband Daniel Cuervo has always insisted she was murdered. 

The fates of the six young men are less well known - and most hoped to fade from the spotlight after feeling 'duped' by TV executives and the world of fame. 

But the others have gone on to forge interesting careers since the show, with winner Tom Rooke - then a lifeguard - branching out into acting, while one even dated Kerry Katona. 

Susunu! Denpa Shonen 

viewers were left 'in tears and screaming at the TV' after a documentary about an 'absurdly cruel' reality show which saw a contestant stripped naked, starved and locked up alone for a year aired last year. 

Storyville: The Contestant, which hit BBC iPlayer last summer told the incredible story of 1998 Japanese show Susunu! Denpa Shonen, or Do Not Proceed, Crazy Youth.

Aspiring comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu, then 22, was locked up, asked to strip naked and tasked with entering mail-in magazine competitions until he won one million yen (around £6,000). 

The man, who auditioned for the programme, was told he could leave at any time - but he decided to persist to complete the challenge, staying for a total of 15 months.  

He thought the footage would be aired on TV at a later date - but what he did not know was it was actually being broadcast live to around 17million people per week.  

The documentary, originally created in 2023, shocked BBC viewers when it hit the on-demand platform, who took to X to express their horror.

Not only did he have to accrue prize money from the magazine competitions, he had to win everything he needed to survive too - including food, clothing and toilet roll. 

He ate undignified meals such as 5kg of uncooked rice, before he was forced to resort to eating wet dog food on day 80.  

Nasubi was stripped of all his belongings and clothes and left alone with nothing but stacks of magazines, postcards, running water, electricity and heating - without ever signing a contract.

His mental state got to the point that he admitted he wished for death - but he tried to stay sane by writing diaries, dancing and playing games. 

The live stream of his endeavours was one segment, dubbed A Life In Prizes, of the larger programme, which saw lots of ordinary people take on crazy tasks. 

In an interview with The Sun, he said: 'The loneliness affected me much more than not being able to eat or not having clothes. 

'There were so many moments where I thought it probably would be better to die now than keep going.

'The toughest moment was when the rice ran out and I needed to face up to eating dog food. I didn't want to eat it but there was no alternative.'

Nasubi admitted that he was in 'such emotional turmoil that I couldn't sleep' and at points even hallucinated to the extent he believed he had been 'abducted by aliens'.

In his diaries, he wrote: 'I don’t have enough nutrition going to my brain. Being driven to the edge has brought out a madness in me.'

When he finally reached the number of winnings needed, Nasubi was eventually freed - but producers soon conned him into returning to the hellish experience.

He was flown to what he thought was a celebratory trip to Korea - where the producers worked for three hours to convince him to go through the process again. 

Nasubi pleaded: 'I thought my life was over. So many times I wanted to die.'

He ended up competing for several more weeks, taking him to 434 days in isolation.

The contestant then returned to Japan, where he entered another apartment and stripped naked, thinking he was about to be subjected to the same turmoil again.

But the walls then collapsed to reveal a TV studio with a live audience of fans, with him becoming aware for the first time that his ordeal had been seen by millions.

He had become an icon during his long ordeal, with the Truman Show-esque programme poking fun at him with slapstick noises and suggestive censoring. 

'Without his knowledge or consent', as the BBC iPlayer synopsis explains, 'Nasubi became the most famous television personality in Japan'. 

As well as the record-breaking viewing figures, his diaries from inside also became a bestseller. 

Fat Families

Sky One's Fat Families may only have aired for two series in 2010 but Gen Z have revived the programme with on TikTok. 

The show had a cult following due to host and 'former fatty' Steve Miller's approach to weight loss in which he refused to pander to any excuses and would instead go as far to insult the participants.

Steve would spend 24 hours with the overweight families as he monitored their diet and lifestyle choices before issuing them with a healthy living plan that would always result in weight loss. 

He revisited the families to check on their progress in season two of the show, Fat Families: Second Helpings.  

Yet motivational speaker Steve, who lost four stone after becoming overweight, didn't hold back with his use of language, telling viewers he was about to encounter 'one of the fattest families I've ever met in my life' who are 'grazing their way to an early grave'. 

Other examples of shock outbursts saw him brand family members 'right beached blubber bellies' and 'Mr and Mrs Massive Fatty'. 

While he also famously uttered 'Watch out massive fatties, the lard police are in town!'

Supersize vs Superskinny 

Channel 4's Supersize vs Superskinny aired from 2008 to 2014 and saw underweight participants with a dangerously low BMI matched up with someone who was morbidly obese.

 The two were brought to 'the feeding clinic' where they lived together for five days and ate each other's diets under the supervision of Dr Christian Jessen. 

After the experiment they would follow a healthy eating plan for three months before returning for a final weigh-in and health screening.

Critics argued that replacing one unhealthy diet for another in the feeding clinic was taking an unnecessary risk with the contestants' health, to which Channel 4 replied that this all takes place under the supervision of medical experts. 

It was also accused of being, with Chief Executive of B-eat, Susan Ringwood, saying 'They're deadly, not entertainment.' 

The show introduced a section in which they featured people suffering from eating disorders who were overseen by a specialist psychiatrist and dietician Ursula Philpot.

The Biggest Loser UK

A spin off of the popular American show, The Biggest Loser UK aired on Sky Living from 2005 to 2006, before being revived by ITV from 2009 to 2012. 

The programme saw overweight contestants compete to win a cash prize by losing the highest percentage of their starting body weight.

Most recently hosted by Davina McCall, the contestants were put through such rigorous exercise regimes by the trainers that some of them got injured, threw up and even passed out.

Critics of the show argued that it promoted unhealthy, unrealistic and unsustainable methods of weight loss. 

While others claimed it also encouraged a fat-shaming attitude due to viewers repeatedly watching obese contestants lose up to seven stone in three months, framing obesity as a matter of personal responsibility without considering external factors. 

Davina hit back at critics by stating: 'They are not crash-dieting, it's all sensible eating and exercise. 

'They are all amazing. I find it very inspirational seeing people that think they can't change their lives and they need a leg up.'

I Wanna Marry Harry

American women who were duped into believing they were dating in unsetting TV show have since said producers fed them false information to 'skew reality'.

I Wanna Marry Harry was a Fox reality show that aired for one season in May 2014, which followed 12 American women who believed they were competing for a chance for date Prince Harry. Instead, however, it was a lookalike named Matthew Hicks. 

10 years later the former contestants spoke out in the podcast of  and claimed they were monitored  24/7 with cameras in bedrooms and ordered not to speak to each other off camera. 

The winner of the series Kimberly Birch and other contestants Meghan Jones and Chelsea Brookshire lifted the lid on the controversial reality TV series. 

The contestants underwent psychological evaluation with a psychologist before being flown from the US and taken to Englefield House, an Elizabethan country home in Berkshire.  

While contestants on the show weren't told that the suitor they were fighting for was Prince Harry at first, they were all made to believe it was him thanks to Matthew's strikingly similar looks to the Duke of Sussex and production crews 'breadcrumbing' fabricated stories. 

The women all said they were told they were joining a show called 'Dream Date' and knew little else when they were whisked off to England, where they spent three days isolated in hotel rooms without any access to the outside world, not even books. 

At the time of the show's premiere, Prince Harry was years away from meeting his wife, Meghan Markle. He still had his bad-boy reputation and was — most importantly — single as he had just ended his relationship with Cressida Bonas. 

Speaking to journalist Scott Bryan on the podcast Kimberly said: 'They started off really subtly, they had Kelly discover a newspaper article on a coffee table about Prince Harry, I don't remember what it said but I remember her telling the rest of us, and one of the staff came and took it away from her.'

Meghan added: 'I remember the production kind of laying these Eggs for us to find, I tried to figure out what their agenda was.' 

Kimberly explained: 'There was a night were we had security outside of our rooms and one of the security guards told a producer ''we have to get him back to the palace, there is a situation there with the royal family'', so whatever was heard, it suggested something that you weren't supposed to hear.

Meghan added: 'Production came out and said ''stop filming, stop filming, this is very serious'', so without camera's on, they gathered all of us girls and producers in Kim and I's room and they told us, ''Your safety is at the utmost importance to us, we are dealing with someone who is a high target individual'', I thought that was their most impactful trick.

'I didn't think they would do anything off camera that would be that shady, so I thought they were actually being realistic.'

Meghan explained that production kept 'close tabs' on them, claiming they were being monitored 24 hours a day, saying they had cameras in their bedrooms and they were 'mic'd up all day'. 

She added: They really kept tabs on us, you couldn't just get hungry in the middle of the day, go to the kitchen and grab an apple, even getting water. For a couple of days of filming I started stealing the digestives they had at breakfast and putting them in my bra, I would take them to my room and hid them in my sock drawer.'

Many of the girls mentioned that they were not allowed to speak to each other unless cameras were rolling, it was called 'put on ice.'

Kimberly said the show taught her a lot about 'brainwashing' because her reality was constantly being skewed.

One of the contestants, Kelly, fell hard for the man she thought was Prince Harry, so much that even the imposter Matthew started to feel uneasy about the lie. 

Matt said he only agreed to do the show if he didn't have to flat-out lie to the women. He was told to act like himself, not a royal, but that didn't stop others from nudging the women's speculation along. 

The show even went as far as staging paparazzi chases and security threats to make the women believe they were dating Prince Harry.

Viewers watched on as the women went on a series of lavish dates with the man whom they believed to be the Prince.

Matt, who is now a father and working as a school teacher, also spoke to the podcast about his time on the show, saying it was the most 'nerve racking' thing he ever had to do. 

Matt revealed he felt 'quite isolated on the show' because the production crew were told to not get too over familiar with him incase they called him by his real name by mistake. 

Even though Matt didn't feel comfortable with the deception, producers appeared to have other ideas and half way through the series, when one of the girls got suspicious, the production crew revealed to the women that Matt was indeed Prince Harry.

Matt said: 'At the time I had no idea they were going to do that. I was a bit miffed and felt quite stressed, I didn't appreciate the way they done it without telling me, but then again I signed up for this, I knew it might happen at some point.

'I only had one option really and that was to just deal with it, so I just carried on the same way really and played it like it didn't happen.'

At the end of the show Kimberly won Matt's heart but he had to break the news that was wasn't Prince Harry like the girls had been led to believe. 

In a bizarre twist, that none of the contestants or Matt knew about, Kimberley was in with a chance to win $300,000, but only if she still accepted Matthew after he revealed he wasn't the Prince.

After winning, she split the prize with Matthew, and after a few show-related meetups, they went their separate ways. 

The show was ultimately pulled from the air after only four episodes due to low ratings. The rest premiered on Fox's website. 

Playing It Straight 

Just last year controversial dating show Playing It Straight set tongues wagging online a whole 20 years after it first aired.

The now-cancelled TV series - which first aired back in 2005 - originally broadcast on Fox in the US, but quickly picked up a UK version.

Fans on X have since rediscovered the gameshow, with one claiming that 'it got homophobic so quickly.'

The series was hosted by American television presenter Daphne Brogdon, with presenting the UK spin-off alongside and comedian , who narrated it.

The British series aired in 2005 and ran until 2012, with June Sarpong presenting it from 2005 and Jameela in 2012.

The original series saw one woman forced to pick a partner from 14 attractive bachelors, but the twist is that half of the men are gay.

If the woman in question picked a straight man, they split a $1 million prize. 

But if a gay man fooled her, he would get to keep the eye-watering cash to himself.

On X, user Corsaren shared a thread of thoughts about the US series, which ran for one season and had a total of eight episodes.

It focused on single girl Jackie, who was looking for her perfect partner, and completely unaware of the plot twist.

They wrote: 'Who do I have to pay to bring this show back on the air holy s**t,' adding, 'I'd say there is at least a 30% chance at this point that the twist is they're all gay.'

Further elaborating on the episode, they shared: 'Oh good, they are now competing with each other to prove how straight they are by talking about her t**s as aggressively as possible lol.'

Contestant Gust was first to get kicked off the show, which appeared to get worse as it went on.

The X user claimed it was before bosses started to ban alcohol on shows, as one of the contestants was 'intentionally tricking another to take too many tequila shots'.

Playing It Straight aired in the UK on Channel 4 from April 8 to May 13, 2005 for a total of six episodes, and later on E4 from January 9 to February 27, 2012 for eight episodes.

The reality show featured one woman in a Mexican villa with a group of men, some of whom were gay, and she had to identify the straight men to win the £100,000 prize. 

The Swan 

Just a few months ago a woman who went under the knife on one of the most controversial American makeover shows has revealed how she was scarred for life from the series. 

The Swan, which ran for two seasons from 2004 on US network Fox, saw a group of women participate in a pageant after undergoing a three-month transformation