The 50 Most Influential Reality TV Seasons Of All Time

CANDID CAMERA

SEASON 2 (1949)

What began as a radio program called Candid Microphone soon pioneered the winning formula of hidden-camera prank shows. Candid Camera introduced the juxtaposition of a manipulated environment and authentic human reaction that would later be exemplified in Punk’d and international shows like Old Enough.

AN AMERICAN FAMILY

(1973)

Producer Craig Gilbert wasn’t trying to invent reality TV as we know it when, in 1971, he brought cameras into the Santa Barbara home of Bill and Pat Loud and their kids. But what he ended up with was seven months’ worth of footage about one family that, when aired as a 12-part series on PBS, attracted around 10 million viewers and was dubbed the “ultimate soap opera” by TIME.

LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS

SEASON 1 (1984)

Mansions. Yachts. Celebrities with golden tans lounging poolside. Host Robin Leach’s foghorn baritone showering viewers with “champagne wishes and caviar dreams.” This is the fantasy Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous peddled for more than a decade beginning in the mid-’80s. The show shattered taboos around flaunting riches and opened the wealth-porn floodgates.

THE REAL WORLD

SEASON 3 (1994)

The premise was simple yet intriguing: put a group of strangers in a house and film them as they “stop being polite and start getting real.” The Real World, which marked MTV’s first foray into nonmusic programming, was an instant hit, setting a blueprint for reality docusoaps to come. The third season of the show featured a boisterous cast of seven, but its most memorable star was AIDS activist Pedro Zamora.

COPS

SEASON 7 (1994–1995)

Shot at the height of the show’s relevance, on the heels of several Emmy nods, Season 7 of Cops enabled two of the country’s biggest, most controversial police forces—the NYPD and LAPD—to launder their reputations. But that same year saw the publication of multiple studies that uncovered the show’s racist subtext and confirmed it was biased toward officers.

SURVIVOR

SEASON 1 (2000)

More than 20 years after the first season of the premise of the show hasn’t changed much. But while the rules of the game are simple—to outwit, outplay, and