Hate the Player, Love the Game: A Brief Obsessive Guide to Reality TV Challenges

Here you go (PDF, 15.7MB).

Yes, I probably should have written more of an intro for a project that's been six years in the making like this one has, but you'll see pretty quickly why it's taken so long to get this out. Not only is it an update to my previous Mole challenge guides, it also updates all four of the other shows I've done in the past (Survivor, The Amazing Race, The Crystal Maze, and Genius Game), and just for fun it also adds four other shows (Big Brother, The Challenge, Masterchef, and Taskmaster) that I probably wouldn't have had time for if not for Melbourne's long lockdown in 2020 and 2021.

I've chosen the end of 2024 as an arbitrary end date for inclusion, to avoid being stuck in a never-ending cycle of seasons currently airing; as if happens, that date combined with the specific shows and versions added here means there's a nice round 500 seasons included in this guide. Two of those seasons have been omitted for different reasons (one because of current events, one because it's effectively lost media), although I've added the two seasons of The Mole that have so far aired in 2025 to counter their absences.

So... where to from here? I kind of don't know. The current nine shows will all be updated periodically depending on my whims - maybe not all at the same time - but in terms of the "big" reality shows, most of what's been left out is either a "skills subjectively judged" show like Project Runway and Drag Race that doesn't lend itself well to being detailed in this format (even Masterchef was a struggle to get through, and that has the benefit of being generally tolerable), or has enough gaps in available information that any attempt to make a guide for them would feel incomplete. The only really massive shows that currently feel doable would be The Apprentice (and we all know exactly why that's not here) and Fear Factor (same reason; however, it was a very late cut as I was writing and like 3/4 of it is done already, so it may end up getting added at some point down the track, even if not for a few years). Beyond that, honestly, no clue yet. It's definitely time to take a small break for now before I even start working on it though.