My Big Fat Influential Gypsy Wedding

It's that time of year again and the second best of all the national newspaper lists, (the first being the Sunday Times Rich List) The Media Guardians Top 100 most influential people in the British Media.

No real revelations apart from a rather questionable entry in at 100, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and The Only Way is Essex. Im not judging, (as I have recently jokingly refereed to such television programmes as low brow) but in what has been a strong 12 months for factual television where do such examples stand? Both shows received criticisms for effectively scripting the story lines and presenting themselves as documentaries. However, this is no worse than films such as Exit Through a Gift Shop, Catfish or Im Still Here whose representations of the truth have also been questioned. What such television shows have done is bring "documentaries" to large audiences (8 million people tuned in for My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding) Not only that but both shows also create insightful debate and discussions around what people should expect from factual programming.

These programmes may have been certainly been influential and even damaging in terms of stereotyping groups of people, but they may have also been incredibly influential in the direction of documentaries on british television.