At the end of last year, MrBeast – an unfathomably successful YouTuber who revels in obnoxious demonstrations of wealth – went mainstream. He launched Beast Games on Prime Video, a sort of cloth-eared, Squid Game-style elimination show that entirely failed to twig that Squid Game was a satire. I gave it a pasting, but it went on to become Prime’s second biggest series debut of 2024.
As such, we now find ourselves in a weird new world. Streamers have realised that the only way they can compete with YouTube is to open the cheque book for its content and run it on their own platforms. It’s what Amazon did with Beast Games, and it’s what Netflix has done with Inside. The latter is a British reality show that premiered on YouTube last year. Every episode got more viewers than anything shown on BBC One, so Netflix quickly snapped up the rights to the second season. Inside will be watched by so many people that it’s almost pointless for me to tell you whether it’s any good or not.
I can tell you, at least, that it isn’t particularly original. The central conceit of Inside is that a bunch of people have to live in a house together, which makes it largely indistinguishable from Big Brother. There’s a room where everyone hangs out, and a shared bedroom, and a room with a chair where everyone can directly address the camera, almost as if it were some kind of diary. The contestants must also intermittently submit to challenges, which seem to primarily involve being covered in rats and spiders, which may raise eyebrows in the I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! legal department.
However, two things separate Inside from generic reality mush. The first is that it only lasts for a week, with a new episode every day, so it won’t run the risk of wearing out its own novelty. The second, and by far the most interesting, is that the contestants have to deplete their own prize to survive. They start with a million pounds and, aside from basic nutrition, have to buy everything else at comically jacked up prices. Want a cup of tea? That’s £400. A packet of crisps? £500. Fancy a Pot Noodle? That will set you back a grand.
From this, it will be perfectly clear to everyone reading that the point of Inside is impulse control. By depriving yourself of unnecessary luxury for a very short amount of time, you have more chance of winning a life-changing sum of money. Anyone with even a shred of common sense could understand that.
However, the contestants on Inside do not have a shred of common sense between them, because the contestants on Inside are all influencers. They’re streamers and TikTokers and online rappers and – in a genuinely baffling turn of events – legendary former footballer Patrice Evra. One of them calls himself “News Daddy”. They’re all punishingly difficult to like.
Before the first day has ended, these dimwits have blown through tens of thousands of pounds. And that is before the Sidemen start selling them miserable little cups of prosecco at £1,000 a pop, which sets off a firesale of unregulated spending. I’m tempted to keep watching purely to see if it becomes the first reality show in history where the contestants end up owing the producers money.
So it’s all a bit naff, but at least Inside benefits from being more watchable than Beast Games. That show was self-aggrandising to the point of psychosis, whereas this is slightly more British and low-key about things. The narration is a little bit sarcastic and Come Dine With Me – “Let’s see which influencers are having tax issues this time,” it sniffs, by way of introduction – which helps to undercut some of the shrill, full-volume attention-seeking elsewhere on the show.
Plus, it’s never a good thing to judge a show like this on its first episode. Like Big Brother, The Traitors and I’m a Celebrity before it, there are simply too many big personalities trying to make a splash at the same time. Once the herd has been thinned a bit, it should gain a bit more breathing room. Who knows, with time and familiarity, it might even end up becoming a bit compelling.
