Having dead parents is not a personality trait….

I know what you mean. Im gutted that my mum never got to meet my children ( or they her), but I’ve had 30 years to get used to missing her. How much worse would it have been if we’d had those 30 extra years together.

Agree with this.

The people on these reality shows are being prompted to talk about tragic things in their life. The production team will be encouraging and pushing it. The participant will know that it is expected to tell their story.

They have to be open about their lives because it makes more interesting TV.

It’s well known that reality tv shows look for these kind of people because they’re more likely to get the sympathy vote from the viewers. That’s why we eventually stopped watching X factor type crap - just another I’m doing this for my dead mum/dad/granny/dog story. Nothing original.

This isn't new. Peter Kay satirised it in 2008 on Britain's Got the Pop Factor... and Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice. One of the contestants is R Wayne, who doesn't get through boot camp because his back story isn't sad enough. Then his Nan suddenly dies when she hears that he has been eliminated, and Pete Waterman interrupts her funeral to tell Wayne that he's back on the show because he's now got a sob story.

Nope, but watching turgid reality TV is definitely a personality type. What it indicates is the people featured on these shows aren’t very interesting, so the production team are mining (a basically empty cave) for some texture or detail in otherwise entirely dull people.

It can be very OTT, but I certainly like to hear about people overcoming adversity and presumably others do too.

My dad losing his mum at 16 affected the trajectory of his whole life.

You can't understand why anyone who didn't have a mother has lifelong trauma?

But I thought that having a mum around was the most important thing for a child to grow up into a healthy rounded adult.

At this point, I think we have to assume that it increases ratings.

I've come to realise that pretty much everyone has had something tragic happen to them

Strongly agree, and the older you get the more this is true.

However, you aren't getting on Race Across The World if you aren't prepared to talk about it! It's just the nature of this kind of programme.

😂😂

We call it "wheeling out the dead nonna", when it's a programme like Masterchef. Of course, it was a real experience for the contestant but having a dead parent or grandparent doesn't make you a better cook/singer/ whatever. It's lazy production to try to wring crocodile tears from the audience, and it amazes me that so many contestants agree to it.

The current MasterChef has barely any sob stories - yet! Still Friday's final to go.
One of them mentioned his mum and her good cooking. "She died several years ago." Water under the bridge, clearly. Not so much as a quiver of the lip 😂
Last year it was as though they'd picked contestants from a therapist's patient list.

You miss them at any age.

My parents never became grandparents in their lifetime. They would have had three grandchildren.

I have been an "orphan" for 36 years now and am so used to the idea that I don't dwell on it.

There's no mention of anyone losing parents young in the OP. For the record, I lost my mum very suddenly when I was 18. But unless I was specifically asked about it or it was relevant to the discussion there's no way I'd talk about it on tv or anywhere else to people I don't know. I've come to realise that pretty much everyone has had something tragic happen to them

@MoltenLasagnethat's horrible and I'm so glad you had the nerve to say no. It's easy get talked into things in that kind of environment

See also people being "working class", try to find a political activist, poet, singer etc who doesn't bang on about how working class they are. Given that the vast majority of us will have working class roots it's probably the least interesting thing about a person but it always gets wheeled out.

Any show including members of the public seems to be all about the 'backstory' which is why I rarely watch them any more. There's absolutely a time and place for talking about loss and struggle, but it isn't 'The Great British Bake Off'.

I think it’s the TV producers who push contestants on these programmes to talk about things like this. I lost my DF when I was very young and it’s rare that I think that someone has spontaneously brought up a dead parent in a show like the X-Factor, Love Island etc. they will have been heavily pushed / encouraged to talk about it by the showrunner.

I don’t have many reality shows to compare with as I don’t watch much tv, this is one of the only programmes I watch each year. I love the show and liked the contestants. Margo definitely had a fabulous energy and the reasons for them doing the challenge certainly centred on what they went through. I also feel the money will make a big different to the two young men who won. However I feel someone who hasn’t been through something so life changing would also be challenged with such a task.

This
I 100pc agree

My brother’s in a wheelchair after a horrible accident at work. I keep trying to get him to pair up with me for a quiz show with decent prize money, we’d romp through the auditions.

I agree re the talent shows but you are wrong about RATW.

The point is to show how doing the race puts them in a different environment that prompts them to think about their past and work through some of the issues.

And with Mark and Margo the shared loss was the precise reason they paired up. It was a genuinely interesting back story.

On this year’s BGT the runners up were a drone display team who never told us anything at all about their backstories. I’m not sure their individual names were even given.

That said, you are right and DH and I always have fun when we watch American Idol, predicting which contestant will have a parent who had an oxy problem…

I used to work in TV and the tragic tale is now part of the nations personality. And I hate it, which is why I used to work in TV.
Even the geekiest of special interest groups will volunteer the most irrelevant detail alongside specialist knowledge, often repeating it, primed by production.
Eg. You and your friends have reconstructed a steam engine from pieces. It's not enough to ask how or where or what and get because this is our hobby and we could so we did.
Theres a ton of ADHD and Autism which they were blissfully unaware of for decades just getting on with technical jobs in niche areas which now gets dragged out. My favourite, is honouring a dead person they have never met, often a grand dad or men who were conscripted during a War, always referred to as heros. Not in charge of stores or working in a car factory who enjoyed model engineering and their allotment.
Women are only honoured for cooking despite an entire generation raised on Angel Delight and a dull rotation of regular economical standards.