Reality show The Circle will put social media in the spotlight

Georgia Humphreys finds out more from presenters Maya Jama and Alice Levine

When Big Brother hit our screens back in 2000, no-one had seen anything quite like it before.

Fast forward to the present day and there’s a new reality show hoping to capture the public’s imagination.

Described as a popularity contest, The Circle will air every day on Channel 4 for three weeks, with players filmed living in separate apartments in a London block of flats.

Here’s the catch: they won’t meet each other face-toface until they’re knocked out of the game. The only way they can talk to each other is through a speciallydesigned, voice-activated social media platform.

And, at the end of the series, the most popular player will win up to £50,000.

“Nobody has seen social media looked at in this way,” says Alice Levine, who, along with her Radio 1 colleague Maya Jama, will be presenting the show.

“Everyone’s on an app, everybody is filtering their lives, to varying degrees. Why not acknowledge that?”

Here’s what to expect.

The concept

All the players can see of each other are the photos they have chosen to put up on their profile page.

During a conversation on The Circle, the other player can immediately read what they’ve said and talk back to them – just like social media in real life.

As the series – described as a mix of Big Brother, Black Mirror and Catfish – progresses, unpopular players can be blocked. When this happens, they’re out of the game.

How people try and win the popularity contest is up to them. They could, for example, choose to present an entirely fictional version of themselves.

Of course, this can happen in the real world, on apps like Instagram – most of us are guilty of only sharing highlights of our lives with our followers. “I post

0 Co-hosts of The Circle, Alice Levine, left, and Maya Jama

pictures on holiday, but I don’t post pictures when I’ve got home and I’ve got to wash all my dirty laundry,” says Levine, 32, also known for co-presenting hit podcast, My Dad Wrote A Porno.

“You choose what part of your life you show.”

The contestants

Exactly who will be taking part in The Circle is being kept under wraps for now.

But what we do know is the players won’t already be social media influencers, or bloggers with a big following.

“It’s everyday people,” says 24-year-old Jama, who grew up in Bristol.

“Basically, who uses Facebook? Your mum, your nan, your auntie, your niece – anybody.”

The game play

The Circle being a new concept does add a certain amount of pressure on the presenters.

“It’s petrifying,” Levine says. “This could end after one series.”

But Jama has a different take on being on a new show.“i don’t find it scary though,” she says. “It will be interesting to observe humans in that kind of environment – even if you’re not on social media and you’ve never used Facebook in your life, you’d be intrigued as to how it works.

What would be their tactic if they were playing The Circle?

“I would probably be a

catfish,” says Jama with a loud laugh. “It’s your opportunity to be somebody completely different and see how far you can get with it. Why not?”

When it comes to using social media in real life, the star, who is in a relationship with rapper Stormzy, admits she feels a responsibility to her followers (on Instagram, that’s an impressive 680,000 people, by the way).

“I will do personal messages on Instagram stories where I’m like, ‘I took about 100 shots to get this one that I just uploaded, this is not how I woke up’,” she elaborates.

“A little bit of honesty is nice, because it’s easy to look online on somebody’s profile and be like, ‘Wow, everything’s perfect all the time’. And my life definitely isn’t perfect all the time.” The reaction

“Social media’s not going anywhere so to ignore it exists would be naive, and to ignore that young people enjoy being on it would also be something that’s difficult to deny,” Levine says. “Having a healthy relationship with it is something we should talk about more.

“I think The Circle does start a lot of those conversations about identity, how we represent ourselves and how we want to be seen.”

● The Circle starts on Channel 4 tomorrow, 9.15pm