What makes for an iconic moment in reality TV? Following a six-year hiatus, the Real Housewives of Sydney and its overhauled cast is gunning for nothing less, after the reboot's first season struggled to capture the zeitgeist.
Reportedly "too mean" and vulgar to be aired in the United States, season one was packed with profanity-fuelled one-liners, aggressive fights and capes thrown into Sydney Harbour. Finding the right balance between provocative and repulsive is an artform, with cast mates and producers alike playing loose with reality to create captivating TV.
As the new series is underway — currently airing weekly on Binge — we took a look at a select few of the key turning points in Australia's reality TV history to see how we ended up here.
(We're sorry in advance if your favourite show is missing. While we'd love to deep dive into Who Dares Wins, Cosima de Vito's nodules or when Australia's Next Top Model announced the wrong winner, charting the entire history of Australian reality TV would require a tome.)
1992: Australian meets its first real housewife
Australia's first foray into the genre of reality TV, Sylvania Waters, seems quaint by today's standards.
The 12-part series, a 1992 co-production between the ABC and BBC, followed millionaire couple Noeline Baker and Laurie Donaher and their children as they lived, drank and argued in the titular wealthy waterside Sydney suburb. It was incredibly popular, providing a blueprint for reality TV to come. But it also proved ultra controversial.
When it aired, the ABC received hundreds of complaints from viewers.
They believed the show was a harmful and stereotypical depiction of Australians as loud, uncultured, xenophobic drunks.
Locals were particularly upset — and for good reason, as the suburb is still associated foremost with the show to this day.
Similar shows sold as an inside look at affluent communities across Australia — Netflix's Byron Baes, Channel 10's short-lived The Shire, and Channel Seven's just-announced Made in Bondi — have copped criticism, even before airing, with locals often correctly worried they'll be depicted as vapid and uncultured.
Call it the Sylvania effect.
Labelled by press as the "Neighbours from Hell", the Baker-Donahers weren't ready for the spotlight, or for the nascent tricks of reality TV editing. And with Noeline copping much of the ire, it's almost like she was the original housewife of Sydney, a "love-to-hate" character delighting in boats, alcohol and arguments.
On an episode of You Can't Ask That, castmate Mick Donahers reflected that the family were shocked when they watched live and saw how their lives were edited, alleging footage of the cast with alcohol was spliced in repeatedly to make the them seem like heavy drinkers.
The family's 15 minutes, for the most part, came and went. Although Noeline made a now-classic, post-reality foray into music with No Regrets, her one and only single — a path many reality stars and real housewives to come would follow.
2001: Big Brother — and Australia — is watching
Once we'd seen a family in a house together, why not chuck 10 strangers together in a house filled with cameras and them cut off from the outside world? Among the first editions of this reality TV franchise — which began in the Netherlands in 1999 and now has more than 60 versions — Big Brother Australia was billed as not just reality TV, but a "social experiment".
In "reality", that meant watching a bunch of predominantly twenty-somethings bored out of their minds, driven to stupidity and drama in efforts to pass the hours in-between stressful challenges and commands offered up by an omnipresent voice.
With an average of 1.4 million viewers tuning in across the first season's 85 days and 98 episodes, the show saw housemates whittled down each week with contested public-voted evictions, and the winner taking home $250,000.
While ultimately coming third, it was 22-year-old Sara-Marie Fedele who became the main "hate her or love her" figure for the now-ludicrously simple trait of wearing pyjamas, bunny ears and doing "the bum dance". Fans even wore bunny ears in solidarity.
Later seasons were more mired by controversies and headline-grabbing moments, from housemate Merlin Luck's powerful silent protest for asylum seekers on live television, to accidental eliminations, cheating scandals and a nudity-filled Uncut program that some housemates weren't even aware existed. There was also a sexual assault during the show's sixth season in 2006, which saw two housemates immediately ejected from the house.
The incident saw then-PM John Howard declare "get this stupid program off the air" in a radio interview. But it would take until 2009 for him to get his wish. The show has since been rebooted twice, once in 2012 and again in 2020, and has now been aired by Channel Ten, Nine and Seven.
Big Brother's success was followed by an avalanche of international reality competitions making their way Down Under in the 00s, including The Biggest Loser, Dancing with The Stars, Australian Idol, Australia's Next Top Model, The Mole, So You Think You Can Dance, Beauty and the Geek and many, many more. Our obsession was well and truly underway.
2009: MasterChef plates up a wholesome alternative
The UK may have invented MasterChef, but Australia perfected it.
Transforming just another cooking show into a high-octane competition with tear-jerking eliminations, MasterChef Australia has proven to be one of our country's most popular reality shows.
For five nights a week across three months, amateur Australian chefs battled it out with a set of nail-biting challenges — from creating a dish around a mystery box, to challenging a celebrity chef to a cook-off or guessing every single ingredient in a curry.
Both low stakes (no love affairs or ugly fights here) and high-octane viewing (the cake didn't rise!), MasterChef proved to be a winning formula — entertaining, educational and wholesome.
It also launched an army of armchair culinary experts.
Sure, the show can be a little too dramatic — we'll never forget when then-judge Matt Preston smashed a dish in season two and called it "disgusting" right before an ad break, only for the show to return and reveal he called it "disgustingly GOOD", insisting he destroyed the meal because he couldn't bear to share its genius.
But is that not disgustingly good TV? Not to mention far less exploitative than the sadism seen elsewhere.
Across its 15 seasons (and counting), the show has introduced us to some of our most beloved public chefs and TV figures, including Adam Liaw, Poh Ling Yeow, Andy Allen and more. Notably, MasterChef Australia remains one of Australia's most reliably diverse shows too, with contestants sharing their culture, heritage and stories through their cooking.
2013: We find love in a hopeless place
While 80s game shows like Perfect Match (shout-out to matchmaker robot Dexter) introduced Australians to the idea of landing love on TV, The Bachelor kicked off our current obsession with dating competitions back in 2013.
Since then, we've seen: horrific chocolate bath dates; the Honey Badger stringing along a whole season of women, including Brooke Blurton; Sophie Monk's return to reality TV (Popstar is worthy of its own book); and some truly abhorrent behaviour between contestants, from gaslighting to slut-shaming.
Oh, and true love's blossom, once or thrice (Matty J and Laura, you make us believe).
The Bachelor's success has seen a proliferation of dating shows, including its own spin-offs The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise, as well as Love Island Australia, Married at First Sight and Love Triangle, plus a set of more wholesome takes, like Love on The Spectrum or Better Date Than Never.
Arguably, it's the potential train-wreck of most of these shows that keeps us coming back, as contestants run the gambit of being genuinely there for love and itching to enter influencing.
The Bachelor, in particular, straddles that balance of sincerity and vacuity, proving what every reality TV lover (and ex-contestant) knows: the genre can be both real and completely fake at once.