The Greatest Show Never Made is a three-part docuseries about a group of UK residents who gave up their jobs and living situations to participate in a year-long reality show in 2002, with the hope of winning a £100,000 prize. But it turns out that it was all a sham, and the producer of the supposed series, Nik Russian, was a mysterious scam artist.
Opening Shot: “In 2002, the world was obsessed with reality TV,” says text on the screen. “Overnight, ordinary people became huge celebrities. One man had the idea to make the greatest reality show ever.”
The Gist: Through interviews with five participants — Lucie Miller, Jane Marshall, Tim Eagle, Daniel Pope, Rosy Burnie and John Comyn — as well as footage shot by Tim on a professional digital video camera he bought shortly before the “show” started, we get a picture of just what was going on in the participants’ lives at the time and why they thought this was a good opportunity.
All five of the participants, in their 20s and 30s, felt stuck in their lives, as we see in over-the-top reenactment scenes where the people play their younger selves. Lucie was a carpet salesperson who wanted to be a TV presenter; Rosy worked in a dead-end office job. Tim was (and is) a clown; Jane was in a cycle of going out with friends and getting drunk a lot. John was a bartender; Daniel had just moved to London and just wanted to participate in the excitement of one of the world’s most exciting cities. When they saw a listing for a reality show audition, they threw caution to the wind and applied.
The ones whose tapes are selected for the audition received a contract from a man named Nikita Russian, who was there at the venue, situated on a small island in the city. From there, 30 people in groups of ten were selected. The group these six were in meet in a rundown neighborhood in South London, and Lucie, selected as a co-presenter with Nik, finds out the “game”: They have one year to make £1 million, however they choose to do it. Oh, and they have to find a place to live on their own. Something certainly seemed sketchy, and not just because this didn’t look anything like Big Brother.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Style-wise, The Greatest Show Never Made resembles docuseries like Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?.
Our Take: What stands out about The Greatest Show Never Made, created by Liam Coutts, Emily Dalton and Tom Dalton, is the show’s grasp on just how insane this situation really was. The producers do a good job of capturing just how dominant and relatively new reality TV was in 2002, and through the stylized reenactments using the participants playing their younger selves, we get a good grasp of just why every person would put their lives on hold for a reality show produced by a person as mysterious as Nik Russian.
At a certain point, the producers are not only going to talk to more than this core six participants, who decides to stick it out after most of the 30 participants quit, despite the questionable circumstances. They’re also going to try to confront Russian himself, who dropped off the face of the earth after this scam was revealed.
What’s interesting about this story is the question of whether these people are victims or, as you might yell to the screen as you’re watching just about any reality show, “no one forced them to do this.” Yes, most of them gave up their jobs and living situations, just to find themselves homeless when the premise of the “show” was revealed. But Russian never faced criminal charges because there was no monetary fraud. Still, he never really faced a reckoning for his scam, and we’re looking forward to hearing this mysterious guy explain himself.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: A menacing shot of Nik Russian getting wet in the rain.
Sleeper Star: Tim wins this one going away, mainly because of his ode to being a clown, and the commitment he gives things he wants to try. Want to be a camera operator? Then of course you buy a professional digital video camera. What else would you do?
Most Pilot-y Line: John’s reenactment of what he was doing at the time of his audition seemed bleaker than the others; all he’s doing is mopping behind a bar. At least the others got to pretend to look at old computers or, in Lucie’s case, set a carpet sample on fire.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Greatest Show Never Made is a fun docuseries about a scam that could only have seemed to happen in 2002, at the start of the reality TV frenzy.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.