'Pig Royalty' Is The Best Reality Show of 2021 (So Far)

Eric Shorey discusses a slept-on and shockingly emotional Discovery+ reality TV series.

Since its inception, reality TV — as a genre of entertainment — has oscillated between exploitation and documentation. Tracing the roots of the genre back to Warhol’s Factory-era films, which in turn inspired MTV’s Real World, the extent to which participants were being unwittingly taken advantage of has remained a question. What some have begun calling…