The original reality show Big Brother is 25 and The Traitors is now the biggest hit on TV. Our Writer at Large Neil Mackay explores the influence of reality TV on society and our lives

If the 20th century had jazz and cinema, then the 21st century has reality TV.

Indeed, reality TV is the defining art form of the 21st century, just as jazz and cinema defined the 20th century.

That doesn’t mean reality TV is a substantial - or even ‘good’ - art form. It simply means that in the current era it’s the art form which dominates.

Jazz and cinema emerged as the 20th century began. Both came to influence all other culture which flowed throughout the rest of the century.

No jazz, no rock and roll. No cinema, no TV.

Fittingly, jazz was at the heart of the first fully-fledged talking movie: The Jazz Singer. The two were culturally symbiotic.

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Likewise, reality TV appeared as the 21st century began, and, whether we like it or not, it has been the principle force shaping all other culture over the last 25 years.

Social media, for instance - the 21st century’s other totemic cultural creation - would not be as it is without the influence of reality TV.

Social media has at its core the same impulses as reality TV, and serves much the same purpose socially, psychologically and culturally.

Reality TV watered the ground where social media grew. It established cultural mass participation, celebrated chaos, and embraced democracy’s darkest strain: mob rule.

Now is the perfect time to explore how reality TV shaped this century. Big Brother - reality TV’s foundational event - has just turned 25. The genre is fully matured.

The Big Brother house(Image: PA)

The series The Traitors is currently morphing into Britain’s biggest cultural phenomenon. It’s a show upon which the BBC........

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