For TV critic Diana Wichtel, reality is a natural development in the TV landscape.

And I also think we're evolutionarily wired to watch and observe and see what people do in situations and to either think, ooh, I'd never do that, no, no, no, no, or why doesn't she do that, or oh, my God, look what she just did.

We're scanning the savannah to see how to survive and that's one way we pick up information.

Anyway, this funny disconnect between what we say and the little exceptions we allow ourselves is something Diana's seen too.

I've always argued for the genre against its legions of enemies or people who say they hate it.

Like a million people come to me and say, I don't really watch TV and I don't watch reality shows.

No, they're terrible.

But then they're saying with a vaguely confessional tone, I hate to admit it, but I hooked on Married at First Sight Australia.

So I don't know what that is, but I think, and this is very much the know it when you see it situation, I think when I watch that or when I make it, I look at it and think, "Yeah, it's reality." [gentle music]

I think those shows that grew out of the place and used more real people seem to me the pioneering sort of ethos that would lead to reality television.

What she found on our local screens back then didn't look all that different from the reality telly of today.

I mean, when I came here, there were shows that I would now kind of include just because they were trying to be about real people and, you know, Country Calendar, for instance.

And you could say that's more documentary-like, but I think those shows were kind of in that mix somewhere.

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