Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model is a three-part series on Netflix about the renowned reality show that started in the early 2000s.
The first Netflix documentary series I’ve seen in a long time that I wish was longer.”
The documentary takes a look at how the show began and goes behind the scenes.
Both Scott and Hayley thought Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model was a must watch.
Hayley thought this “is a must‑watch.”
She says, “I watched Top Model when it came out.”
“I loved it, and I loved it because it was awful.”
“And I always kind of wondered what happened to the girls after the show ended because this was before social media, when most reality TV stars would just disappear.”
She explains that “the whole idea of this show was that the girls would go on to become a top model, so it always felt like their absence was more obvious.”
“Because where were their billboards? Where were their campaigns?”
According to Hayley, “this documentary answers all of that and obviously the answer is quite bleak.”
Hayley says the documentary looks at “all the big controversies of the show, like the filming of what looks like sexual assault, although nobody calls it that in this documentary.”
She adds that the series looks into, “whether or not producers should have stopped what was happening, because they were trying to do this new kind of reality thing, where they were treating it like a nature documentary.”
“It was ‘don’t get involved, don’t try and save the seal’ or whatever.”
But, she says, “they weren’t thinking about the safety of these teenagers or the emotional stability of these teenagers.”
“That just wasn’t part of the equation.”
Hayley ends by saying, “this isn’t a perfect documentary. It’s from Netflix, so I think some of the seriousness is lost to kind of Netflix‑y nonsense. And I’m not sure how much you can legitimately blame it on being a different time when we were all aware of its awfulness at the time.”
Scott says, “I also think this show is fascinating.”
He says it sits “at the heart of the initial rise of reality TV, around the same time when Big Brother was very popular in the UK, where it is a little bit of trying everything and really causing problems along the way.”
He also adds that it “sets the path to where we are with reality TV, which is fundamentally a lot safer.”
He explains that “the whole premise of this show was this idea of rallying against what has been referred to as quote unquote, ‘heroin chic’ at the time, trying to show that other women and eventually men are allowed to be models, and that they were trying to sort of lower the barriers of entry.”
He says this becomes “quite questionable by how judgemental they ended up being on the people who participated in the show.”
According to Scott, “this was a reality show where at the end of it, somebody would end up getting a modelling contract.”
“But as the show went on, and I think this is why it became sort of fascinating, but problematic, as they went to extreme lengths to just get viewers.”
Scott adds, “I felt that in episode three, they sort of talk about, oh, you know, members of the team didn’t like each other in terms of a judging panel.”
“I didn’t care about that because I didn’t watch it.”
“I think if you didn’t watch America’s Next Top Model back then I think you will find it fascinating, because it gives you an idea of what TV and society and fashion was like at that time. So you don’t have to see yourself as a fan of it.”
He concludes by saying it is “the first Netflix documentary series I’ve seen in a long time that I wish was longer.”
All episodes of Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model are available to stream on Netflix now.
Listen to the full reviews of all three programmes on BBC Sounds.
Why not contact Scott and Hayley with the shows you’ve been loving, loathing or both on mustwatch@bbc.co.uk.
We used AI to transcribe and summarise our Must Watch feature.
This article was then written and reviewed by a BBC journalist.