������̳

Title sequence to The Family - the first British reality TV series, which was broadcast in 1974. It was a controversial and widely discussed television experiment of the time, and a precursor to more recent reality TV series. The opening scene shows the series producer talking with the Wilkins family in their small kitchen in Reading about how the process will change their lives.

Students could analyse the sequence focusing on the genre features of reality TV. They could consider how the reality is established, eg location, mise-en-scène, language used, period etc. Learners could discuss whose perspective dictates the making and the organising of the filming. Consider the representation issues and discuss key questions regarding mediation, eg does the fact that the director says they will be filming everything really mean that? Students could discuss how it would work in reality from a production point of view with hundreds of hours of footage. They could debate if it is possible to discern whether there is a political angle/ bias in terms of the representation, and what the director wants us to think and feel about these people. This is useful in relation to more modern fly on the wall programmes.