The Neighbourhood Reviews: Graham Norton’s Reality Show Called ‘Derivative’ By Critics

Ever since The Traitors became a near-immediate hit in 2022, networks have been fairly blatantly clambering to come up with their own equivalents.

There’s even an argument that interest in ITV’s Big Brother reboot – announced before The Traitors, but debuting months afterwards – was piqued by the popularity of the BBC franchise.

Last week, ITV unveiled its latest attempt to cash in on The Traitors’ success in The Neighbourhood, a new reality series where teams of households move into a makeshift residential estate, where they’re pitted against one another to try and get their hands on a shared crash prize.

With Graham Norton on presenting duties, there was definitely interest in The Neighbourhood when it was first announced last year, but sadly, critics don’t seem too bowled over by the finished product, which began airing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and will return to our screens later this week.

In a lukewarm two-star review, The Guardian said Graham was The Neighbourhood’s sole “saving grace”, but called for “a moratorium on new reality shows, at least until the frenzied desire for a challenger to The Traitors’ crown is over”.

“Any sense of jeopardy is conspicuous by its absence. Norton lifts the energy when he’s there but is only present for the welcome and removals-voting,” the review explains.

“The contestants are largely a charisma-free bunch, and the only one that isn’t is evicted early, with a suggestion of underlying racism that everyone works very hard to ignore.”

In its own two-star review, The Telegraph agrees that Graham is a “good host, keeping things nice and jolly”, but lamented that The Neighbourhood (referred to as “Traitors-lite” in the piece) may be a case of style over substance, suggesting producers put “more thought into how it looks than how engaging it is to watch”.

The Times called The Neighbourhood “mediocre”, “derivative”, “bland” and “boring” claiming: “It tries very hard to be like The Traitors, as do so many wannabes these days, but doesn’t come within a country mile of it.”

Meanwhile, The Irish Independent also referred to it as a “Traitors knock-off” that makes for “tedious” viewing.

It fared somewhat better in The Independent and Metro, who each gave The Neighbourhood three stars, although the former opined that “even Even Graham Norton can’t save this trippy reality show”, and writing that the show doesn’t allow him to play to his strengths.

The latter, on the other hand, called The Neighbourhood a cross between Desperate Housewives and The Traitors, insisting that as the show progresses, it “begins to reveal its true identity – not just as a glossy imitation of The Traitors, but as a slow-burning social experiment with a vicious streak”.

“It may take time to find its footing, but once it does, it becomes brilliantly ruthless television,” Metro’s review concludes.

Graham previously maintained that The Neighbourhood’s format stands on its own two feet.

“It properly is a new format,” he told ITV. “It’s not ‘something meets something else’, it’s not, ‘it’s like this, but that’. I really thought, ‘I hadn’t seen this show before’.”

He continued: “It leans into our curiosity about what’s behind closed doors and there’s something really compelling and addictive about seeing the way the existing households interact with each other. I thought, ‘I’d watch that’ – and I’d never want to work on something I wouldn’t watch. I thought, ‘this show would hook me!’.”

The Neighbourhood continues on Thursday night at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX.