Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model

Whether you were a fan or not, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model is a fascinating and thorough look at one of the biggest reality franchises ever—warts and all.

Netflix’s juicy documentary, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, looking back at the show isn’t exactly an exposé, because we could all see that it was a hot mess. But you will still goggle at this reminder of what ANTM served up each week for our entertainment.

The Netflix docuseries doesn’t probe as deeply as the podcast, but it does assemble key figures.

Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model is a scathing indictment of Tyra Banks and the 2000s reality TV phenomenon, though an overlong runtime and frenetic editing prevent it from making more coherent, forceful points.

For a show about beauty, Top Model was always ugly – but Reality Check’s conclusions are only skin deep.

It offers little in the way of insight. .... The point of ANTM was not to create models, Reality Check suggests. It was to make TV entertainment, no matter what happened to the contestants in the process. This conclusion seems fairly obvious, and it skirts the more interesting purpose of revisiting ANTM, which is to consider its legacy.