[ComingToGetYou]

“This is the perfect opportunity for us to make reality ‘real’ again,” says Peter Tierney, the commissioner who has spent the past two years overseeing ITV‘s rebooted Big Brother.

Speaking as ITV prepares to become the third UK network to premiere the world-beating format, Tierney says his team have listened relentlessly to audiences “telling us that they want real, authentic reality.”

“The beauty of Big Brother is all you have to be is yourself and interesting, you don’t have to sing or dance or look a certain way,” says Manley, drawing a line between Big Brother and the likes of Love Island and Britain’s Got Talent.

The casting process took a colossal 10 months and Manley’s team sifted through 30,000 applications, eventually interviewing 500 people.

“Satisfying superfans” while tapping into a new generation was Manley’s biggest challenge. “There is this core fanbase that have a connection to the show and we want to make them happy and live up to their expectatoins while also appealing to 16-24 year olds.”

“The Channel 4 version felt like Channel 4’s and ditto Channel 5 so it was really important for us to take ownership of that brand and give it a sense of ‘ITV-ness’,” he says. “We didn’t want to tinker and change things too much but you can pull certain levers and do certain things around the edges that make it feel like an ITV 2 show.”

Tierney flags the decision to introduce two ITV-friendly hosts in AJ Odudu and Will Best, along with playing with the design of the iconic house, which has moved from Hertfordshire to London. Tierney describes it as “the best Big Brother UK house ever and potentially one of the best anywhere in the world.”

The team has also learned from the flood of international versions that have launched in the five-year interim period, according to Manley, who points to successful iterations in the likes of The Netherlands, Mexico and Australia, along with the evergreen Big Brother U.S. on CBS.

The pressure is on for Tierney, whose boss Paul Mortimer told the Edinburgh TV Festival “this is just the start so watch this space” as he unveiled a second season prior to the first’s launch.

ITV isn’t targeting a specific rating as a measure of success but will be closely examining the degree to which Big Brother “makes a noise,” Tierney says.

“You don’t stand up a show like Big Brother with the thought that you might do a series, see how it goes and then maybe not do another,” he concludes.

“Hopefully on launch night people will look at the show and say ‘OK they are not messing around here’.”

MORE HERE: https://deadline.com/2023/10/big-bro...re-1235560034/