Are you guys familiar with the most terrible reality show of all time? Think The Truman Show but with starvation, isolation and extreme mental anguish. It was a Japanese show that starting running in 1998. They forced a man to live naked on camera and to fully feed and clothe himself from sweepstakes prizes for 15 months. The contestant knew he was being filmed but didn’t realize that his footage was being turned into weekly episodes that were airing on television. It gets worse but I’ll spare you.

I think of that show when I hear how manipulative and abusive modern reality shows are, and when I see covert reality shows like Jury Duty and its second season, Company Retreat. In those cases the main subjects didn’t know that the shows were revolving around them, and that they were surrounded by actors. The producers seemed to avoid stepping over the line, but where is the line exactly? Are the stars just acting OK with it due to Stockholm Syndrome and/or pressure to look good on camera? Is editing giving us a false impression of what these people went through?

That’s all preface to this story from Denmark. A Danish comedian named Rasmus Wallbridge thought he was filming a horror comedy movie, but instead it was a reality show about him, made with hidden cameras. After the first episode premiered, Rasmus objected and the whole season was pulled from the network. That’s how you do it.

A TV network in Denmark has withdrawn a Truman Show-inspired series in which a comedian was fooled into thinking he was making a movie, but was instead secretly filmed for months without his consent.

Rasmus Wallbridge thought he was working on a comedy-horror film with his friend, Martin Johannes Larsen, but he was actually being recorded by hidden cameras, The Times reported.

Without realizing it, he became the star of the six-episode reality series Alle elsker Rasmus (Everyone Loves Rasmus), which was broadcast on state-owned network TV 2.

More than 300,000 people viewed the first episode, which premiered on Monday, Oct. 26, before it was removed from streaming services five days later amid increasing backlash, local newspaper Berlingske reported.

The series is reminiscent of, and inspired by, the classic 1998 comedy-drama The Truman Show, in which Jim Carrey plays Truman Burbank, a life insurance salesman who’s unaware his entire life has been staged and aired on TV.

According to Berlingske, a total of 149 people took part in the prank.

Along with accusations of bullying, some viewers claimed producers had manipulated the show by recycling Wallbridge’s laughter in the final episode, when the hoax was revealed to the comedian, The Times reported.

TV 2 initially defended the series’ premise, Berlingske reported. However, Dorthe Thirstrup, the network’s program director, later made a public apology to Wallbridge, who took time away from his newborn baby to work on the project.

“The series should never have been made, and therefore it should never have been broadcasted,” Ulla Pors, chief content officer at TV 2, told the Ritzau news agency, per The Times.

According to the show’s director, a psychologist closely followed Wallbridge to ensure he was not filmed alone, while he also had the option of saying no to the series airing, per the outlet.

[From People]

In a statement to Instagram, Rasmus wrote, in part, that “None of those closest to me, including my manager and my girlfriend, knew about the production while we were filming. Like me, they believed we were in the middle of shooting a feature film for Nordisk Film.” This makes me wonder if this production was egregiously bad and deceptive, or if Danish people are just more considerate with better legal protections. It’s probably a little of both. We just heard Collin Gosselin’s story about his terrible childhood, and there are so many other cautionary tales. There need to be laws in the US limiting how reality shows are made and edited. At the bare minimum, people should not be covertly filmed.

Photos are screenshots from YouTube