The Year in Television: Our Three Favorite New Reality Series

This is the fourth in a multi-part series, The Year in Television 2011.

Reality TV often feels like a pretty well-worn genre. Most new shows feel like they've just taken an already-popular show and added a few small changes. Once in a while, someone will demonstrate why it's a bad idea to try to mix two reality show concepts (as the few viewers of America's Next Great Restaurant could tell you). However, in 2011 we discovered three shows that left us enthusiastically following every new development as if we were discovering Survivor for the first time.

The Voice judges

When we first heard about The Voice, we wondered if TV needed another reality TV singing contest, especially since Fox had been talking about their singing contest, The X-Factor for a while. The early ads for The Voice didn’t make us that excited either, leaving us to shrug and ask, “It’s American Idol with swivel chairs?”

Happily, we were proven wrong when the Mark Burnett produced NBC series made its debut. The eclectic, more mature group of singers stood out in contrast to the competitors American Idol has delivered over the years. The rivalry between The Voice judges felt playful and natural. And with four recording artists as the judges, there was a stronger focus on artistry. This was a stark contrast to shows where the judging panel included music producers and the critiques focused more on marketability.

Most importantly, The Voice let its competitors be individuals in a way that seemed so rare on Idol. That included allowing four of its competitors to be openly gay from the beginning, including Mormon Tyler Robinson and the big-voiced Nakia (who dared to audition by singing judge Cee-Lo's hit song "Forget You"). After years of Idol’s gay competitors waiting until after the competition was over to come out, that was a small (but overdue) detail that made The Voice really stand out.

The Glee Project contestants vying to become a part of New Directions

Oxygen also offered a show that initially sounded like just another singing contest in The Glee Project, except this time the singing contest was tied in to Fox’s hit musical series Glee.

Thankfully, The Glee Project delivered something very different from its competitors. The performance challenges were slickly produced music videos and reminded us of what Glee can accomplish when it’s at its best. It also delivered a heartbreaking and innovative take on the elimination ceremony. Instead of having a host take unnecessarily long pauses as he listed the status of each competitor, we watched their faces as they approached a callback list and learned their fate by watching to see if their expression turned from nervous to relieved or saddened.

Glee is a drama about the joy of performing. The Glee Project delivered the harsh reality of show business, the rejection, the repetitiveness and the challenge of seeming spontaneous on the fifteenth take. Still, much like Glee, viewers could overlook all those depressing qualities when it came time for the next eliminated performer to sing the series’ farewell song, “Keep Holding On.”

Bravo may have perfected the reality series where professionals competed against their peers, but in 2011 the Syfy Channel surprised us with a new take on the genre. Face Off took twelve prosthetic make-up artists and put them in challenges that asked them to design movie monsters, create body paint designs and develop convincing disguises.

On paper, it sounded like this might go as badly as Top Design, or other artistic reality competitions that quickly ran out of ideas for compelling challenges and became so dull we forgot they existed even while they were still on the air. What can you do with prosthetics aside from making actors look less human or making Nicole Kidman look Oscar-worthy? Turns out a lot.

Face Off was a revelation similar to Project Runway in its glory days. Viewers who didn't give special effects makeup much thought were suddenly aware of the depth of work that can be created in the field. More importantly, since the work created was visual we could actually judge each creation from the distance of a TV screen. We developed strong opinions of what we saw and became invested in the different styles of the remaining artists.

With the genre now so well-explored, it's hard launching a new reality series these days. But we think The Voice, Glee Project and Face Off all offered something original and earned their success. Do you agree? Disagree? Which new reality series captured your interest in 2011?