Page 15 - Fyne winter 2014
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Airport – 1996-2008
The Real World – 1992-Current
The world was not quite ready for reality TV in the 1970s
and An American Family was criticized for being too
detached from real life. After all, how could you act ‘real’
when there are cameras in the room? But almost twenty
years later, MTV felt their audience was ready for some
real life programming again and inspired by An American
Family, it came up with the ideal of The Real World, a
show where a bunch of young people get the apartment of
a lifetime for several months and have to cope with living
together.
Being unafraid to court controversy, the very first show
featured a gay man, Norman Korpi (although they did wimp
out a bit and labelled him ‘bisexual’ instead). In the show, he
had the opportunity to explain his sexuality to other house
members who either hadn’t been exposed to homosexuality
or were initially ever so slightly homophobic.
But the big hero of The Real World was Pedro Zamora. He was in the 1994 series of the
show. Housemates were told that one of the housemates had AIDS, but were not told who.
From the very outset, Pedro, who was a very active AIDS advocate, told the house it was
him. Having contracted HIV at the age of 17 and in a time before the sophisticated drugs we
have now, Pedro was already counting the months he had left. His story struck a chord with a
worldwide audience and his polite and delicate manner endeared him to everybody. After the
show was over, he started to tour schools around the US. However, his health deteriorated
and before the year was over, he had succumbed to his illness. His housemates from the show
continued to do talks in schools and colleges for many years after.
The UK was slightly slower to develop the reality TV
bug and one of our first tastes of ‘normal life TV’ was
Airport. The show followed several members of staff who
work at Heathrow, the world’s busiest airport terminal.
From the outset, a viewer’s favourite was the flamboyant
Jeremy Spake, the Ground Service Manager for Aeroflot.
His command of several languages and his highly-camp
manner added cheery notes to a show which also tackled
some pretty serious subjects. After Airport, Jeremy was
given his own show, The World’s Worst Jobs and he
also wrote a spin-off book from the series. He was also
recently given an honorary doctorate too!
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