Résumé en français : alors qu'elle s'essouffle dans de nombreux pays, la TV réalité connaît un succès grandissant au Royaume-Uni. Participants et téléspectateurs sont de plus en plus nombreux à la plébisciter.

Britain has a reality TV programme to suit all tastes. There are the all-singing-all-dancing shows - Britain’s Got Talent, Dancing on ice, The X Factor. There’s a business one, The Apprentice, where contestants compete for a dream £100,000 –a-year job. There’s also a cooking one, Come Dine With Me, where strangers hold dinner parties for each other. Not to mention Wife Swap, where wives exchange families for a week. Then, of course, there’s Big Brother, where members of the public live together and perform different tasks. The late Jade Goody became famous through the show.
In fact, many British stars owe their fame and fortune to the reality TV series that propelled them into the spotlight. According to a recent survey, singers Girls Aloud, a girl group that was created on the talent show : Popstars in 2002, are the highest earning reality TV stars, followed by Will Young and Leona Lewis. Last year’s Britain’s Got Talent winner, the opera singer Paul Potts, is 7th on the list. The latest reality TV star set to do well is Susan Boyle, who became an overnight phenomenon after her appearance on a reality TV show where the winner gets to perform in front of the Queen at the Royal Variety Performance.

Unlike the rest of Europe, reality TV in Britain is going from strength to strength. According to the Learning and Skills Council, one in seven UK teenagers hope to become famous by appearing on reality television. Perhaps they see it as proof that ordinary people can become celebrities.
But what happens when reality TV goes too far? A few years ago, there was a British reality TV programme called ‘There’s something about Miriam’. Six men were invited to spend several weeks wooing an attractive woman. However, they threatened to take legal action when they found out that Miriam was a transsexual. The men received undisclosed payouts before the show was aired.
Another programme, aired on Channel 4 in 2005, had contestants believing that they had blasted off into space from a cosmonaut training camp in Russia. They were actually in a fake spaceship in a warehouse in Suffolk, England. The three ‘winners’ were strung along for two weeks, becoming suspicious only after being asked to hold a ceremony on their ‘spaceship’ for a celebrity Russian dog called Mr. Bimby. They received £25,000 each, although they did admit that they were disappointed.

But what is it that makes so many people watch reality TV? It is most likely for a few different reasons – laughing at somebody else’s expense is up there, but so is the desire to be impressed by someone’s talent. And then there’s always the idea that we don’t look to these programmes for reality, but for escapism.
Piers Morgan, the judge for Britain’s Got Talent has perhaps understood when he talked to Susan Boyle after her performance in the semi-finals of the competition. “When the world is going through a pretty tough time, and looking for hope and inspiration, along came Susan Boyle to provide it.”