Has reality TV gone a little too far?

The genre has been growing progressively risk-prone and now, after two helicopters crashed while filming a French show, questions are being asked whether the limit has been reached.

The images were undeniably real. Far, far too real. In the space of just 20 seconds, horrified producers watched as a helicopter flying across a shimmering Argentinean sky lost height rapidly, soon ploughing into its counterpart, hovering just a few metres below.

Onlookers sprinted to the spot where the helicopters had hit the ground, bursting into flames, finding only dead bodies among the mangled metal. Ten people died in the crash on Monday, including Camille Muffat, the French Olympic gold-medallist swimmer; Alexis Vastine, an Olympic boxer; and Florence Arthaud, a champion sailor.

As news of the crash spread around the world, François Hollande, the French president, spoke of his “stupor and emotion”. His countrymen, he said, died “because they wanted to push the boundaries”.

They were hoping to do so by competing in Dropped – a French reality-television series in which they were to be flown to a remote location and then abandoned. Cameras would follow their attempts to find their way home. A frivolous pursuit for serious sportsmen, perhaps, but a chance to test themselves none the less.

In the end, it was left to their friends to wonder whether those boundaries had already been pushed too far. As a manslaughter investigation began on Tuesday, it was fruitless to speculate about what caused the crash and whether it could have been avoided. But, regardless of the outcome of the inquiry, several celebrities have already ruled themselves out of appearing in such shows in the future. For them, this is the wrong sort of reality.

A key ingredient of every successful reality programme is risk. Of course, this crash is not at all the sort of danger they would have in mind, but it could come to symbolise a commissioning culture that demands ever more peril for our viewing pleasure. Has reality television itself finally pushed the boundaries too far?

Television audiences had always been fascinated by the idea of watching ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Candid Camera let us chuckle as we discovered how easily people much like us were fooled, while game shows and talent searches such as Idols suggested we might all aspire to fame.

With the launch of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here, the premise of the genre changed, and became much less constrained by reality.

Reality meant seeing television personalities in a highly unusual situation – in this case, the jungle – being cajoled into doing very odd things indeed.

There is, though, a simple answer to those who gripe about reality TV: stop watching it. –– The Daily Telegraph