 The first series of Big Brother was a phenomenon in the UK |
Reality show Big Brother has been cited as one of the 20 TV programmes that changed our world - along with the moon landing, Monty Python and Live Aid. The fly-on-the-wall show was included in a Radio Times list of influential TV shows for starting the reality craze.
News reports on JFK's assassination in 1963 and the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 were also included.
The list was compiled by history journalist Hugo Davenport, author of Days That Shook the World.
Of Big Brother, he wrote: "This multimedia event - pointless, trivial, banal, but obsessive - stoked the appetite for talent-free celebrity."
The sole children's show on the list was Tiswas from 1974, while comedies Till Death Do Us Part and Monty Python's Flying Circus also made it.
The 1960s had the most entries of any decade, with seven shows, while the 1990s and 2000s had two entries each.
The full list of 20 programmes that changed our world:
- That Was the Week That Was - 1962
- JFK Assassination news reports - 1963
- Till Death Us Do Part - 1965
- Cathy Come Home - 1966
- Monty Python's Flying Circus - 1969
- Apollo Moon Landing news reports - 1969
- Royal Family - 1969
- The World At War - 1973
- Tiswas - 1974
- The Naked Civil Servant - 1975
- Life On Earth - 1979
- Michael Buerk's Ethiopian news reports - 1984
- Live Aid - 1985
- That's Life, launch of Childline - 1986
- Death On The Rock - 1988
- Kate Adie's Tiananmen Square report - 1989
- Gulf War news reports - 1991
- Panorama interview with Diana, Princess Of Wales - 1995
- Big Brother - 2000
- 11 September news reports - 2001
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