Television series

Big Brother

Name: Big Brother
Released: 2000
Cast: Julie Chen Moonves, Clayton A.S. Halsey, Ian O'Malley

The original social experiment turned pop-culture fixture: a dozen-ish strangers locked in a house wired with cameras, forced to form alliances, backstab, and vote each other out weekly until one walks away with half a million dollars. It's messy, petty, occasionally profound about human nature, and built for background-noise summer watching. Best enjoyed by people who like their reality TV a little unhinged.

TVMaze rating

5.8

If you liked this

Survivor2000

The other original. Same core DNA of alliances, betrayal, and weekly eliminations, but outdoors and hungrier, which somehow makes the social scheming even more desperate and delicious.

But Decades of seasons means a steep learning curve if you want to understand why fans argue about strategy so much.

The Traitors2022

A murder-mystery costume party grafted onto the same paranoid group-house energy, with celebrities and civilians lying to each other's faces at breakfast. Genuinely tense in a way few competition shows manage.

But The Scottish-castle theatrics and Claudia Winkleman's whispering can feel like a lot if you want something breezier.

Love Island2019

Swap alliances for showmances and you get the same surveillance-house gossip machine, just horny and sun-drenched instead of strategic. The recoupling twists hit the same nerve as an eviction night.

But It's romance-first, so if you came to Big Brother for cutthroat strategy this will feel thin on gameplay.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

An American Family1973

Big Brother's entire premise — cameras everywhere, no scripts, watch what people do when they forget they're watched — was essentially invented here, decades before anyone thought to add a cash prize.

Long before reality TV existed as a genre, PBS filmed one real family's daily life for months, unscripted, uncut, and it shocked the country. This is the actual ancestor of every camera-in-the-house show that followed.

But There's no game, no prize, no editing tricks for drama — just slow, sometimes uncomfortable real life, which can feel glacial now.

The Circle2020

Strangers building alliances entirely through a chat app, with catfishing and blocking replacing votes and evictions. A weirdly perfect update of the same isolation-and-social-strategy formula for the phone age.

But The gimmick of players never meeting face to face can feel gimmicky itself once the novelty wears off.

The Mole2000

A saboteur hides among a group doing challenges together, and everyone else has to figure out who's sandbagging the missions. Pure paranoid deduction with none of the romance-show filler.

But It's slower and more puzzle-based than Big Brother's constant interpersonal chaos, so it can feel cerebral by comparison.

Squid Game: The Challenge2023no page yet

Hundreds of real players, giant-scale games, and the same core question Big Brother asks in miniature: how far will ordinary people go against each other for money on camera.

But The fictional show it's based on had stakes of life and death; this version can feel a little hollow by comparison.

Perfect Match2023no page yet

Reality veterans thrown into a house to pair up and scheme, with the same gossip-fueled alliance-building Big Brother runs on, minus the eviction ceremony's finality.

But Leans hard into stunt-casting nostalgia from other shows, so it helps to already recognize the contestants.

The Apprentice2005no page yet

Weekly boardroom firings instead of evictions, but the same appeal of watching alliances form and collapse under pressure, with a bonus dose of corporate absurdity.

But The business-task format and dated boardroom theatrics feel far removed from Big Brother's lounging-around-gossiping charm.

RuPaul's Drag Race2009no page yet

Competitors living together, judged and eliminated weekly, with confessional-booth bitchiness that rivals any Big Brother diary room session. The talent layer just adds extra sparkle.

But It's a talent competition first, so the house-drama element is more of a side dish than the main course.

Meerkat Manor2006

Strip away the confessionals and diary room, and Big Brother is a group-living social hierarchy under surveillance — which is exactly what this show captures, just with meerkats instead of houseguests.

A wildlife documentary that plays exactly like a soap opera: rival families, power struggles, betrayals, all narrated with the same breathless stakes as a season finale. Nobody's voted out, but the drama is just as vicious.

But It's still, underneath the narration, nature footage of small mammals, which is a hard sell if you want human scheming specifically.

The Stanford Prison Experiment2015

Both put strangers under round-the-clock observation and watch what emerges; this one just takes the premise's darkest implication — what confinement and surveillance actually do to people — completely seriously.

A dramatization of the real 1971 study where ordinary people, assigned roles and put under constant observation, spiraled into cruelty disturbingly fast. It's the same house-and-cameras premise with the stakes turned all the way up.

But This is grim, serious filmmaking about real psychological harm, not entertainment — a genuinely uncomfortable watch, not a fun one.