10 Horrifying Reality TV Shows You Won’t Believe Exist
6. Shattered (Channel 4, 2004)
Two years before Fox came up with the idea of using a form of psychological torture for a reality show dressed up as a psychological experiment, Channel 4 one-upped them by using a physical and psychological form of torture in the form of sleep deprivation. Plus the show was broadcast daily and hosted by Dermot O'Leary but that was for the audience to cope with. The set-up fills the two basic criteria for inclusion on this list: it's simple and sinister. Ten contestants are put in a house together and are only allowed to sleep for one hour a night over the course of eight days and seven nights in order to win a prize fund of £100,000 from which £1,000 is deducted whenever somebody closes their eyes for more than ten seconds. The contestants would undergo various tests in each episode to examine their mental agility after being deprived of sleep with the lowest performing contestant being evicted.
As well as performance tests not entirely unlike those used in Solitary, each episode of Shattered also featured a challenge called "You Snooze You Lose" that took place at three o'clock in the morning where the contestants were subjected to various stimuli intended to induce tiredness like watching paint dry while sitting in a warm chair, and being read a bedtime story over and over again. Something that makes the programme feel like a demented parlour game invented by an eccentric Victorian gentleman with far too much time and money on his hands. And of course, the contestants suffer serious negative effects from taking part in the programme, experiencing paranoia, dreaming while conscious, and suffering physical side effects like nearly falling asleep while standing. All of which make the programme uncomfortable to watch yet oddly fascinating. Eventually, nineteen year old Police trainee Claire S won £97,000 after being deprived of sleep for 178 hours. Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial (broadcast on Channel 4 last year) doesn't seem like such a stretch when they'd already produced this.