21 years ago, 10 people headed down to an abandoned shopping centre in London to compete against each other in a battle of severe sleep deprivation. $134,000 was up for grabs, and all they had to do was stay awake for a week.
Reality TV is known for pushing the limits when it comes to scandal and controversy, and it's a genre with a past littered with shows that probably wouldn't make the cut today.
While plenty of us love digging into a bit of guilty pleasure viewing like The Kardashians and The Real Housewives, for producers, it can be a difficult tightrope to walk as they attempt to grapple with ever-changing ethics and the public's hunger for drama.
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The late 90s and early 00s was arguably the height of reality TV and with it came a handful of shows that looking back, people can't believe were ever allowed to air.
One such show is Shattered, a British social experiment in sleep deprivation which saw 10 contestants aged between 19 and 33 compete to stay awake for as long as possible.
But of course, it wasn't that simple.
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Contestants were forced to take part in brutal 'You Snooze You Lose' tasks aimed at putting them to sleep, including being made to cuddle soft toys, sit in an overheated room, be sang lullabies by 'grandmas', and even to watch paint dry in a recliner chair.
And if they dared close their eyes for ten seconds? $1,300 would be knocked off the prize pot. Just thinking about that is making my eyes wince.
In the end, it was Clare Southern who came out on top, winning the final 'sleep off' challenge where contestants were literally sent to bed and had to see how long they could ward off the zz's.
A fellow co-star claimed she'd developed a strategy of giving herself foot cramp, using the pain to force herself to stay awake - though she's admitted this was slightly misrepresented and was just a comment she'd made.
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In the end, she was so good at forcing herself to stay awake that producers had to order her to go to sleep during the final challenge.
But viewers and health experts were left unimpressed. The show was hit with 34 Ofcom complaints about its premise, while the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy branded the show as 'misconceived and dangerous', pointing to the case of world-record attempter Peter Tripp, who had a breakdown after he went a staggering 201 hours without sleep in 1959.
The show’s runner-up, Chris Wandel, said that being on the show and experiencing such severe sleep deprivation was like 'being at a party. It dovetails with being drunk'.
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"You know how sometimes when you’re drunk you’re having the best time ever and sometimes you can be an emotional wreck? It’s like that," he continued.
For a large chunk of the show, the contestants remained unexpectedly upbeat, but rumors swirled around one contestant 'losing the plot' and having hallucinations around being the Australian prime minister.
Meanwhile, someone claiming to have taken part in the test pilot said it took a month to get his sleeping pattern back to normal, later vowing for it to be the 'last' time he ever said yes to a TV pilot.
"I turned into a zombie and my friends said it was like I was constantly stoned. I would not recommend it," he claimed on Reddit.
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Commenting on re-surfaced clips of the show, while some viewers who watched at the time did find it entertaining, others branded it 'unhealthy','unhinged', and even 'torture'.
Another commented there's no way 'this would be allowed now'.
Despite its hugely controversial premise, Prof Jim Horne, a sleep neuroscientist at the University of Loughborough, who was an adviser on the show, said: “There was an atmosphere of fun about the whole thing that was very important.
“If there’s a bit of fun and purpose to it, you’ll cope better.”
It's also worth pointing out that to ensure the safety of the contestants, they were allowed 45 minute naps every so often, and none of the contestants felt they were mistreated on the show.
According to Cleveland Clinic, sleep deprivation can cause an array of uncomfortable symptoms, including:
- Daytime sleepiness
- Fatigue
- Irritability
- Trouble thinking, focusing and remembering
- Slowed reaction times
- Headaches
And at its more severe, prolonged sleep deprivation can cause:
- 'Microsleeps' (when a person briefly falls asleep for only seconds before waking back up)
- Uncontrollable eye movements (nystagmus)
- Trouble speaking clearly
- Drooping eyelids (ptosis)
- Hand tremors
- Visual and tactile (touch-based) hallucinations
- Impaired judgment
- Impulsive (or even reckless) behavior
Shattered was ultimately canceled after its first season, sitting among a plethora of shelved reality TV shows that tested the limits, and ultimately may have just taken things too far.
Topics: Channel 4, Film and TV, Entertainment, Health
Chloe Rowland