1. The Truman Show
Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) lives in the ultimate reality television show. Although he's unaware of it, his entire life has been monitored by executive producer Christof (Ed Harris) and pumped to the masses as endless entertainment. His family, friends and neighbours are all actors hired to maintain the pretence- and the viewing figures. When one mishap after another threatens to pop the bubble, Truman suddenly questions just why he keeps seeing the same people in the same place every day. His father, 'killed off' when Truman was a boy, is reintroduced as a diversion- but by then it's too late. Truman has stepped through the looking glass... Peter Weir's sci-fi satire touches on everything from fame to existentialism, turning the emergent reality TV trend into an all-encompassing experiment in voyeurism. An unexceptional man has been given a worldwide audience, yet it's the former that grows tired first. By defying the network, Truman goes 'off-script' and sails off to the real world. Life imitates art imitates life. And by playing God (as hinted in his name), Christof's dilemma of ratings versus morality mirrors the compliance of his crowd. The film's final image is that of an audience searching for something else to watch. Perhaps that's the trouble with television: there's never anyone worth watching...