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How reality TV and streaming shaped the last 25 years of TV

In the second of our new miniseries looking back at the last quarter-century of pop culture, we chart the transformation of television since 2000

Gwilym Mumford

To try to get our heads round the fact that we’re somehow a quarter of the way into the 21st century, the Guide is running a miniseries of newsletters looking at how pop culture has changed over the past 25 years. We tackled music last month and we’ll be looking at the state of film next month, before sharing our favourite culture of the century so far, and asking for yours too, in July.

Today, we’re taking the temperature of TV. Like the music industry, television has seen its entire business model upended by the streaming revolution this century. That has meant what was once a universal activity – an entire nation sat around the glow of the old cathode ray tube – has been replaced by people watching a galaxy of different shows, or watching the same show but at completely different times.

Still, the monoculture isn’t entirely dead. A look at the list of each year’s most-watched broadcasts in the UK from TV ratings agency Barb shows that, for all the changes that have come with streaming, tens of millions of us still have an appetite for mass entertainment. That list, based on consolidated ratings (ie viewed within seven days of a show’s broadcast) isn’t a perfect encapsulation of the state of telly: its focus is British, not global; TV’s golden age doesn’t get a look in (shows like The Wire were hardly ratings hits, and for many, were discovered long after they were broadcast); and perhaps most significantly, streaming isn’t fully represented – Netflix, for example, only signed up to Barb in 2022 (though maybe that doesn’t matter: surprisingly, Netflix shows rarely crack Barb’s weekly top 20). But it is the best measure available for getting a sense of what people have watched over the past two and a half decades.

To make sense of it, I spoke to TV journalist Phil Harrison. He’s the author of The Age of Static: How TV Explains Modern Britain, which covers British television from 2000 onwards, so if anyone can explain how TV has changed in that time, it’s him. Here’s the list and what we can learn from it …

The full list

Events, dear boy! Events!

Boris Johnson announces the first coronavirus lockdown, addressing the nation from 10 Downing Street.

Our list shows that the biggest TV ratings this century have been for major cultural or news events. This might sound completely unsurprising – but it wasn’t always the case.

“In previous decades, you see TV premieres of films and more scripted drama and comedy at the top of these lists, but viewers have become more atomised and niche-occupying,” says Phil. “Various quite popular things have stopped being national events as the amount of choice, channels and platforms has expanded. Apart from a few outliers, communal national TV watching is now basically about live events with assumed national importance.”

This means Covid briefings or royal funerals – or, more cheerily, sporting events or the New Year’s Eve fireworks. “Though why so many people watched that live in 2013, I have no idea,” Phil rightly wonders.

Big Brother’s influence looms large

The emergence of reality TV is another theme on the list, with singing contests and then Bake Off taking the top slots. But the show that perhaps defined the reality boom – Big Brother – is surprisingly absent. Still, says Phil, its fingerprints are all over this list.

“The innovations it spawned have driven TV discourse,” he says. “I think a few shows on here – the eliminative format, ‘ordinary people’ as the stars – can be at least tangentially linked to it. You could tie X Factor to it, Bake Off too. It opened up a space and introduced a broad, adaptable idea that literally dozens of shows have since occupied.”

A case in point: the most watched show of 2025 so far is The Traitors – “another show with plenty of Big Brother’s DNA”, says Phil.

The fat lady is singing for soap operas

As the appetite for reality TV has grown across the 21st century, the popularity of soaps has plummeted. Once dominant in these end-of-year lists, EastEnders and Coronation Street now consider it a strong night if they crack the 5m mark – as EastEnders just about managed for its much-trailed 40th anniversary live episode.

With their endless ongoing storylines soaps are particularly ill-suited to the age of the binge, says Phil: “It’s quite a job keeping on top of them, what with all the other options. And streaming shows have, to an extent, taken their place: so open-ended in narrative terms, so expansive in terms of run time and so impossible to kill – Stranger Things has been running for a decade. They’ve essentially become high-production value soaps.”

But it’s not just the delivery method, says Phil – but the actual drama itself: “I just don’t know if they reflect people’s lives any more. You can’t really see 2025 London in EastEnders. You can’t see 2025 Manchester in Corrie. They’re like living period pieces and for that reason, I just can’t imagine they gain many new, young fans.”

That’s borne out by starkly declining numbers for EastEnders and Coronation Street among 16- to 34-year-olds – though Hollyoaks has bucked the trend with that age group, according to Channel 4, by releasing fewer episodes a week and shaving its runtime down to an attention-span-friendly 20 minutes.

Gavin & Stacey aims for the middle

Nessa (Ruth Jones), Stacey (Joanna Page), Gwen (Melanie Walters), Bryn (Rob Brydon), Gavin (Mathew Horne) in Gavin & Stacey.

Of course it’s not just soaps: scripted TV is largely absent from our list from the 2010s onwards. There’s one major exception: Gavin & Stacey, which appears twice on this list, with last December’s finale attracting 19.1 million viewers.

How has a cheerful, low-stakes romantic comedy set in south Wales proved so ratings-conqueringly successful? By aiming squarely for the middle, says Phil. “It’s intelligently written without being hard to swallow. It’s knowing and self-conscious but also has incredibly universal themes: romance, the minor irritations and routines of family life, getting older etc. And it’s really fond and respectful of its own characters – there’s no real snark in it, or victims, or perpetual butts of the joke: it started in the late 00s at the time of loads of cringe comedy, stuff that occasionally veered towards cruelty and there’s absolutely none of that.

“Also,” Phil adds, “it’s got a really good cast. Rob Brydon, Alison Steadman and Ruth Jones are all great at what they do – and even James Corden hits his beats among certain people!”

What sums up 21st-century TV?

Which show on the list best explains UK TV in the last 25 years? With Big Brother ineligible, Phil opts for The Great British Bake Off, a show seemingly in sync with the nation’s psyche, from its name onwards: “That title prefix The Great British … is emblematic of the desperate search for a workable national identity that we’ve been embarking on throughout the 21st century.”

It’s also, says Phil, the show that best demonstrates how reality TV – the dominant genre of 2000-2025 – has evolved: “It feels like we tried slightly cruel variations on reality TV early on in the century and then decided we preferred nice, twee ones instead. With bunting.”

Take Five

Each week we run down the five essential pieces of pop culture we’re watching, reading and listening to

Benicio Del Toro as Zsa-Zsa Korda and Mia Threapleton as Liesl in The Phoenician Scheme.

1	ALBUM – Sports Team: Boys These Days These merry pranksters of 2020s Brit indie seem to get more playful with age: album number three features an interpolation of the Corrie theme (Moving Together) and a lusty billet doux to a Subaru Impreza on I’m in Love (Subaru), which also features the sleaziest saxophone riff since Careless Whisper. But on Boys These Days, pitched somewhere between Sparks, Parquet Courts and Modern Life is Rubbish-era Blur, there’s sharp social commentary too: the Dexys-ish Head to Space skewers our billionaire class’s dreams of intergalactic travel as the world burns, and on Maybe When We’re 30 they pine for the sort of home-owning, new town mundanity out of reach of most of their generation. Want more? Stereolab return after 15 years away sounding gloriously, effortlessly unchanged on classy new album Instant Holograms on Metal Film. For the rest of our music reviews, click here.
2	FILM – The Phoenician Scheme Reviewers are suggesting the new Wes Anderson, about a nun (Mia Threapleton, pictured above with Benicio del Toro) who inherits a fortune and is dragged into a spy saga as a result, is a minor Wes Anderson that doesn’t quite match the manicured delights of his last one, Asteroid City. Still, a minor Wes is nothing to be sniffed at, especially when it features the talents of takes huge breath Del Toro, Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bill Murray (naturally), Richard Ayoade, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe and F Murray Abraham. In cinemas now. Want more? We talked enough about Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning last week but it’s in cinemas now. Tom Cruise’s two major stunts in the film are worth the admission price alone. Plus, here’s seven films to stream this week.
3	BOOK – How to Save the Amazon by Dom Phillips When Guardian reporter Dom Phillips was murdered alongside indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in Brazil in 2022, he left behind an unfinished manuscript, about his time in the Amazon and what needs to happen in order to protect it. A team of writers have picked up where Phillips left off, resulting in a book Guardian reviewer Charlie Gilmour describes as “both brilliant and broken”, and “as inspiring and devastating as the Amazon itself”. Want more? Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi, won the International Booker prize for translated fiction on Tuesday. The short story collection about women in south India is “wonderful”, according to Guardian writer John Self – “a worthy winner”. For all our book reviews, click here.
4	TV – Sirens Netflix have an unerring skill of dropping, without warning, a moreish new “gourmet burger” series featuring a stacked cast and a juicy, slightly soapy premise. So here’s Sirens, which stars Julianne Moore, Meghann Fahy, Milly Alcock, Always Sunny’s Glenn Howerton and Kevin Bacon in a story about two sisters – striving Simone (Alcock) and slacking Devon (Fahy) – who reunite at the swanky beach estate owned by Simone’s smiley, secretly monstrous billionaire boss Michaela (Moore). Cue Devon trying to free Simone from Michaela’s cultish ecosystem in a dark comedy pitched somewhere between The White Lotus and Get Out. Available now. Want more? The even starrier and even soapier Nine Perfect Strangers returns for series two, with new episodes Thursdays. Plus, here’s the seven shows to stream this week.
5	PODCAST – Pipeline The Paria Pipeline Disaster is a strangely overlooked recent catastrophe, particularly given its ghoulish circumstances. In 2022, five divers fixing an oil pipeline near the coast of Trinidad were sucked into it, and travelled hundreds of feet beneath the sea. Four died, but one, Christopher Boodram, somehow lived, and in this podcast Boodram recounts his survival, trapped and gasping for what turned out to be poisoned air in a pipe just 30 inches wide. The podcast also questions the role of Paria, the fuel company that owns the pipeline for its decision, citing safety concerns, to block rescue attempts of the four divers who died. The first three episodes are available now. Want more? In The Ex Files, Christine Amanpour scrutinises world events with the help of former US diplomat Jamie Rubin – who also happens to be her ex-husband. Plus, here are the best podcasts of the week.

Read On

Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of It.

If you only read one piece this week make it Tim Jonze’s massive oral history of The Thick of It, with Armando Iannucci, Peter Capaldi, Rebecca Front and more revealing the making of a sweary, satirical masterpiece.

Dave Rowntree has shared his snaps of Blur’s early years with the Guardian, featuring rollercoasters, Japanese arcade games and Graham Coxon eating Wotsits.

A good get from Cannes: for the Guardian, Xan Brooks sits down with the persecuted Iranian director Jafar Panahi for his first interview in 15 years.

Fresh Hell, the newsletter from former Vanity Fair editor/gossip wrangler Tina Brown, is a worthwhile subscription. I really enjoyed her write up of formidable entertainment mogul Barry Diller’s memoir, full of shrewd insight from someone who knows Diller very well indeed.

As Guide readers will know, film clubs are hotter than hot, and Curzon are getting in on the act with a nationwide film club. They start with three strands: a Michael Haneke retrospective, an LGBTQ strand for Pride and a summer in the city season on the best urban cinema. You can find out more here.

You be the Guide

Last week we asked for your favourite live TV moments, both sublime and absurd. Naturally you leaned heavily towards the absurd. Here are a few of our faves:

“We’ve been really spoiled with ridiculous live BBC News moments over the years: the random IT bloke having to pretend to be a tech expert and the kids ambushing that professor’s interview were both amazing, but the best has to be Simon McCoy accidentally picking up a ream of paper instead of his iPad and then styling it out. Unflappable.” – Tom

“When on children’s morning TV a caller asked Five Star ‘why are you so fucking crap?’” Susannah May

“Representing the Boomer generation, I’ll offer two related ones: First, Walter Cronkite announcing the death of JFK. OK, I wasn’t born yet, but it still chokes me up every time I watch it. And second: Walter Cronkite announcing the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. I was a space nerd as a kid, but it was only as an adult that I could really appreciate how earth-shattering that event was.” – Kevin Osinski from Medina, Washington, US

“In November 1989, I was in a pub which had Newsnight on in the corner television. Jeremy Paxman was interviewing some talking heads about the fall of the Berlin Wall when a journalist ran in and plonked a lump of the wall on the coffee table. They all stared at it and wondered if it contained asbestos. That was a much more interesting topic of conversation than all the previous twaddle.” – Pascal Desmond

Get involved

This week we want to hear about your favourite film opening titles. It could be anything from one of Saul Bass’s beautifully designed titles for Hitchcock to John Carpenter’s DIY effort for The Thing, created in a garage using a fish tank, a garbage bag and a match.

Let me know yours by replying to this email or contacting me on [email protected].

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