Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser review – how did television ever sink so low?

Cruelty. Contestants who have abuse screamed in their face. Cash prizes. This documentary about a horrific 00s weight-loss reality TV series in the US makes for deeply troubling watching

The mid-2000s were a peculiar time in television. After the dubious 90s innovations of Jerry Springer in the US were followed by the UK launch of Big Brother, it was clear that using the travails of so-called ordinary people as fuel for small-screen entertainment was an idea with legs. There was a mini goldrush of sorts as programme makers realised that conflict, extremity and dysfunction would always sell – and that any human-interest subject could be shoehorned into some version of reality TV.

In Britain, ITV’s The Jeremy Kyle Show began casting its malign spell in 2005. In the US, something similarly queasy (and enduring) had arrived a year earlier in the shape of NBC’s weight loss bootcamp-meets-bearpit, The Biggest Loser, which took contestants living with obesity then belittled them with humiliating tasks such as moving food from one place to another using only their teeth. It deployed fitness coaches to scream abuse in their faces, and weighed them in front of a studio audience. For the series winner, there was, in addition to a newly slimline body, a large cash prize.