TV Show Review: The Circle!

FYI, much better than I anticipated, so now I can’t stop watching! They’re supposed to be making a US, Mexican and French version (so it must be good)!

The Circle, is a British reality television series. It’s simply a competition and whoever wins the series, bags themselves £100,000. I’ll try and give you the lowdown on how the show works, but it is a quite complicated concept to explain, so bare with me!

‘The Circle’ is primarily a social media platform, where every competitor will have a profile. There’s usually about 7/8 people on the show/platform at one time. You have to last the whole course of the show without being blocked by other competitors in the show when they have their ‘ratings’, which is a vote. They have to rate people from 1st to the last place according to how many people are on the show, brand new competitors are usually immune from the ratings for the first few days, so they can at least get their foot in the door. Now this is when it gets interesting…

Upon entry, you can be whoever you want to be. So let’s say I’m myself; Antonia, female, 20. I could pretend to be whoever i want to be. I could be a 70 year old male, I could be a couple working together to create a profile as a single man looking for a partner. I could say that I’m into a different sexual orientation, I could even pretend to be of a different race (crazy i know)! I can make a profile for whoever I think will get furthest in the competition. Because really, this show is about the winning fundamentally. So since I could be whoever, you’ll be thinking now, how can you be? People can see you? That’s where the fun begins!

Each person/character has their own flat. It’s self-contained and everything so your fellow competitors will never know for sure who you really are. They don’t socialise face to face only via ‘The Circle’ social media. You can ONLY converse via messaging, you speak starting with ‘message’ then say what you want the message to consist of. Then say ‘send’ and the cameras (or whoever types the message for you) has the massage written whilst you’re saying what you have to say. Almost like having an amazon alexa!

Fellow contestants will always have their suspicions as they’re aware that anyone can be a catfish (a catfish is when you’re impersonating someone else). Even the people who they think they’re getting on the best with could be lying about everything they’re telling you about their lives and themselves. The only way you might get subtle hints as to if they’re a catfish, is if you read into their words. Reading in-between the lines is such an important factor if you want to win this show as you have to try and be as observant as you can without being overly suspicious, so you can get the fake people out.

You don’t get awarded if you find out who the catfishes are, but obviously you want to naturally get them out as they’re lying about who they say they are just so that they can try and win. Whenever the ratings happen as I was saying earlier, whoever comes first and second every time the votings are worked out, they become influencers and have ticks next to their profiles until the next ratings vote happen. When those two are influencers, they have to make a mutual decision (via a private chat on ‘The Circle’) as to who they want to block. Blocking means that the person leaves the show.

What I found very interesting, is that last week a darker skinned female entered the competition as a ‘white middle-class male’. As, she believes it’ll get her further in the competition than if she were to play as herself. She’s very into politics in real life but feels like people almost can’t believe that someone of her complexion/background enjoys politics because of stereotypes. But they will more appreciate it from a white middle-class male. I found that difficult to fathom but it’s very interesting to see how some people think and what certain individuals believe will get them further in the competition.

I find this television series so interesting as it is somewhat of a social experiment, it reminds me in certain aspects of big brother and i was a hardcore big brother fan (sad i know) but I’m not going to lie, it pains me to say that this show might just have the edge over big brother. I just think it’s such an innovative concept and it really does make you use your mind, especially if you’re a contestant.

What do you think? Have you heard of this show? Would you be interested in watching this show? Did you ever watch Big Brother? What’s your favourite reality show? Comment below!