Australia’s raunchiest reality show finally returns to screens

Definitive proof the early noughties are back: Aussies can again watch a bunch of reality TV hopefuls shower once a week.

One of the raunchiest shows in Australian television history made a quiet return overnight, some 17 years after it was yanked from the airwaves.

Big Brother Uncut was the adults-only companion show to early seasons of reality show Big Brother. Airing for six seasons in the early noughties, it featured frank sexual discussions and activity, and many lingering full frontal nude shots of the housemates as they bathed in the Big Brother house’s open showers.

The boys are running around naked …

… the girls are more chaste.

Almost 20 years later, and there are a few changes to the new Big Brother Uncut. Thursday’s season debut didn’t actually make it to TV screens – instead, it was an internet-only episode on the Seven website.

And while O.G. Big Brother host Gretel Killeen would also host Uncut back in the day, this time host Sonia Kruger was nowhere to be seen, leaving Uncut duties to the show’s unseen voiceover man.

Watching people shower for an hour a week? The early noughties are BACK!

It’s not quite the same without a lusty Gretel Killeen voiceover.

And it was rather more chaste than its early-noughties counterpart, with the first episode showing the housemates negotiate the open showers with a little more restraint than they did 20 years ago. Girls wore bikinis, boys went nude but mostly kept their private parts shielded from the cameras.

This new Uncut reboot is internet-only.

The original Big Brother was an explicit and at times, very controversial 9.30pm offering on the show’s original Australian network, Ten. For one hour a week, viewers could tune in to see the content that was too rude to make the primetime show: Alcohol-fuelled explicit conversations, hot tub hook-ups, “dancing doonas” and ample full-frontal nudity.

A typical episode of Big Brother Uncut, season one.

Circa 2005: Pity the housemate using the hot tub after these two.

By season six, though, the party was over. Amid attention about the type of content being put to air, the Australian Communications and Media Authority demanded footage be compiled and reviewed by specially-hired censors so it would stay within the show’s strict MA15+ rating.

Amid a string of controversies – including an X-rated “turkey slap” incident that saw two male housemates kicked off the show – Big Brother Uncut (by then retitled Big Brother: Adults Only) was pulled off the airwaves midway through its sixth season due to pressure from politicians, some of whom were calling for Big Brother to be axed in its entirety.

17 years on, we’ll see if this newly rebooted season will court the same controversy. Big Brother’s had a rough start on Seven this week, opening to a viewership of just 274,000 people across the five metro capitals on Monday. That dropped to 213,000 viewers for episode two, and Seven then moved the show from 7:30pm to the later timeslot of 8:30pm.

A Seven spokesperson told news.com.au that “it is not unusual for a TV network to change the timeslot of shows.”