Tom Ballard, host of ABC's Reality Check, has watched a lot of reality TV. So naturally we asked him to share the most terrible shows he's come across, because why watch good TV when there's these shows?
Tom: Don’t you hate it when you’re just hanging out on an island trying to tune mint bros and/or chicks and then your ex shows up "unexpectedly" and it’s full awks and stuff?
2. Orgasm Wars
Tom: A Japanese show that challenged contestants to give people orgasms whether they wanted ’em or not.
I’LL HAVE WHAT HE’S HAVING LOL.
Tom: Gary Busey basically just trolled the entire show. What’s going on inside his lopsided head? Is he aware of how funny he is? Does he even remember Point Blank? These questions may never be answered.
5. Are You Hot?
Tom: Bronzed idiots walk out onto a stage and are brutally evaluated by Lorenzo Lamas, Rachel Hunter and Randolph Duke (a man who seems to see nothing wrong with being named Randolph Duke). Producers say the show was inspired by every time in high school you had to take your clothes off in front of the popular kids.
6. The Swan
Tom: Speaking of ghastly superficiality and the commercialisation of human self-worth – this show! The Swan saw women who were deemed ugly given extreme plastic surgery makeovers, forbidden from seeing themselves in any kind of mirror for months, then entered in the “Swan pageant” so their new-found hotness could be judged and ranked.
Tom: I can technically “help but watch” this show because it was, how you say, “cancelled before it even went to air”.
But let’s all just take a moment to think about how great our lives could have been if we’d got to tune in and see rapper Shawty Lo deal with the daily ups and downs of being the father of 11 children by 10 different women (aka his “babies’ mamas”)...
Tom: Again, this was never actually made, but hot diggity I wish it was so I could deliberately not watch Charli from Hi-5 and Warrick Capper BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CARE OF CHILDREN AKA OUR FUTURE OH DEAR GOD.
Tom: Remember when Channel 7 got middle-aged mothers to essentially act as pimps for their sons?
10. Man Vs Beast
Tom: This Fox show from 2003 pitted human beings against “athletes” from the animal kingdom in a variety of pointless challenges. It is, quite frankly, cruel, degrading, exploitative…and extremely entertaining.
We’re all going to hell.