The phenomenal success of TOWIE shows no signs of abating, turning some of the cast into overnight celebrities, introducing us to the vajazzle and phrases such as ‘reem and ‘well jel’. It has spawned rival copycat scripted reality shows but TOWIE remains the firm favourite with viewers (and critics alike). Claire Faragher, Series Producer on Series 1 and Executive Producer on Series 2, discusses the reason for its success.

Why do you think TOWIE was such a big hit?

We had an incredible cast of colourful (orange) characters, a lot of laughs, relationship dramas, and a unique way of filming the show, which gives it a cartoonish, hyper-real style. And then there was the high-speed and high-quality editing and structuring. The production team got to know the characters inside out and they had enough trust in us to allow us to film some of their best and worst moments. And due to the speed of turnaround the show was more reactive than anything that has come before or since in this genre (it’s a 24/7 operation). The production team worked very hard and there were a lot of brilliant people who made it such a great series. Some of us worked double shifts or more throughout, came up with the structure pre and post pilot and basically pulled off what many thought was impossible, with between three and nine HD cameras filming every scene and with at most 3.5 days to film and cut each episode. Also, ITV Marketing & Publicity gave it a massive push and at our press launch night I’ll never forget the immediacy with which the tabloids embraced our show. Oh, and not forgetting the hard work and talent of the production team I employed…have I already mentioned that??!!!

One Guardian blogger described TOWIE as “Beyond Trash TV.” How do you respond to TOWIE haters?

I have a number of favourite negative quotes about The Only Way Is Essex that make me hoot with laughter. They are:

“shallow, vain, dim people being shallow, vain and dim”
“real people playing themselves incredibly badly'”and
“fame-hungry oddballs delivering petrified forest performances” and
“The Only Way Is Essex is hilarious for about 10 minutes then you wish you were dead”

I realise that some people will always hate The Only Way Is Essex and I understand that. It’s funny because it’s actually one of, if not the toughest, genres of TV I have ever worked on and it’s certainly not as easy and as smooth as we made it look in series 1 and 2. It’s meant to be light relief and entertainment – the disclaimer says as much at the top of every show. We’re not pretending to be Newsnight.

How real is reality television?

Structured reality and reality TV aren’t quite the same thing. Look at Big Brother: from what I can see, and I am happy to be corrected, a group of people who have been cast for a specific reason and generally do not know each other all live under the same roof, with no access to the outside world and are filmed 24/7 by a fixed rig and are given tasks and challenges to do and are slowly voted off. Their reactions and emotions may be real most of the time but they will also depend on how self aware they are and how they may or may not be playing up to the camera or attempting to project an image of themselves. So when I look at reality TV I think in many respects that’s not really very real at all and a lot of things are produced within an inch of their life. And then if you look at Geordie Shore you can see it’s related to BB as they have fixed rig but they also have hand held cameras and the cast have access to the outside world too. But they do have someone giving them tasks to do. But even if a situation, night out or conversation has been given a helping producer’s hand there is still a lot of scope for scenes and sequences to play out in a more observational way and it’s mainly shot in that way. The cast also do interviews talking about events that have occurred in the past/present tense and appear to be happy to talk about each other positively or negatively safe in the knowledge that the show will transmit at a much later date. This could possibly be termed ‘constructed reality’ or ‘constructed factual’. And I know when I made a series called Last Man Standing that some people deemed that to be ‘constructed reality’. (Although we took them to places further afield than the Bigg Market!)

But ‘structured reality’ on the other hand, and The Only Way Is Essex in this instance, has been pretty real in my experience – but I can only speak for series 1 and series 2 and the first Christmas special. When I was in charge, most events we filmed were going to happen anyway without us, and the relationships were real. The cast were in their own environment, by chance most of them knew each other, and they were doing things they would normally do. They continued to carry on with their lives while we were filming and because we cut and transmitted the show so quickly (which makes it unique) the cast could react to what they had just seen and work out if someone had been fibbing to them in earlier scenes. But what I always had to be eagle eyed about was people starting to strike up relationships or friendships or projecting an image or coming up with something they wanted to do that really wasn’t true to life. This might give them more storylines and minutes on the show but it might not be helpful in the long term. I wonder if members of the cast start out with ideas for storylines for themselves – or desires for something or someone for themselves – that then become new realities for them, two worlds melting into one.

As I always say, it’s the things they are not telling you that you can guarantee are the most interesting things to film, and you hope to find out what they are and if, for example, they are going to split up with a partner they need to trust us enough to do it on screen. In my view there always has to be a foot in reality and the emotion has to be real. The cast aren’t actors so if the emotion or events are fake it’s pretty easy to spot. Although a few cast members could give me a run for my money!

Some viewers like to try and guess if something is real or set up and that’s fine by me. The fact we call them cast rather than contributors I think helps confuse the situation but they can be called either.

What I would say is if structured reality makers move to a more ‘reality TV’ set up, with, for example, more set up events and possibly over produced/controlled storylines, it can make life easier for the makers, as you’ve more of an idea of what you are going to get, but takes these shows away from the more unpredictable nature of these people’s actual lives, which can be better or more bizarre or entertaining than anything you could ever make up and gives it a lighter, kinder, less obvious and potentially funnier touch.

We helped get people in the right place at the right time so their paths would cross but a reaction may or may not have occurred. So which way it went was entirely in the hands of the gods. That was really exciting to me.

Clearly I always feel that within certain scenes as a producer you want certain subjects or beats to be hit (which genuinely reflect their lives) but if the beats aren’t hit and the cast go off in a different direction I generally find that something more creative and exciting might occur.

As people often repeat themselves, an important storyline point that was expected to happen in one scene would often be mentioned again (or if it hadn’t been said might then be said for the first time) in another scene, so that generally ensured a certain storyline could still be told. If it wasn’t ever referred to then generally a better storyline had come along unexpectedly. That might not always be the case so you have to be able to think on your feet and work out what storylines you do have.

There are numerous variables to contend with, so a good dose of instinctive storytelling comes in very handy, for which you need a strong editorial and dramatic sensibility. In this area, experience is vital.

You have to be a confident programme maker with nerves of steel to let something be as real as possible in such a short turnaround, and it also means that location and the edit have to communicate with each other constantly.

But saying all that, there was always a ‘soft script/possible outline’ when I was in charge, which was my preferred way of doing things on Essex, and we had the confidence in the edit to play with the structure of a show to tell the storylines in the best and most engaging ways, while keeping within compliance rules.

During series 2 we increased audience figures on average by 450,000 to 500,000 viewers per episode – the highest gain ever for any The Only Way Is Essex series – and this achievement will probably never be repeated. Such a spike in viewers is of course massive in terms of digital channel viewing figures and is something me and my team are very proud of. It also gave series 3 a great foundation to build on, which eventually they consistently did.
And one thing to remember is that although we call this ‘structured reality’ the Americans would possibly term it ‘dramality’ (think of The Hills).

Although structured reality may have a soap sensibility it’s also closely related to an observational doc. For me the best shows always had a nice tempo or rhythm to them structurally and story-wise. And I personally drew on many of my skills to make The Only Way Is Essex, such as gaining access and fully understanding a precinct, finding unique cast members and spotting potential stories, and using smart editing and storytelling and storylining techniques. Also, skills I had used on drama docs, multi-camera shoots and even chat shows came in handy. I could talk about this forever, so I’ll shut up now!

Claire Faragher is a freelance Executive Producer and PB member.