Tuesday is often a dreary day, rarely anyone’s favourite. Its proximity to Monday is far too close, and its proximity from Friday too far. But in my household, Tuesday holds an important significance as it is what I like to call Below Deck night. Below Deck is a programme on the American network Bravo which follows the crew of various superyachts as they work to cater to every extravagant whim of their very wealthy guests. It sits within a wider Bravo-verse, on many people’s radars most recently due to events on the show Vanderpump Rules and more widely as the network which hosts The Real Housewives franchise and its many iterations.
Like The Real Housewives, Below Deck sits within its own, slightly smaller, universe. There are currently five different iterations of the show, one to fit every taste. The original Below Deck takes viewers to the Caribbean where they can feast their eyes on a tropical paradise, while the first spin off Below Deck: Mediterranean takes viewers to beautiful European destinations. For those who like their yachties a bit more laid back there’s Sailing Yacht and Down Under with their affable captains Glenn and Jason. or those who like a bit of adventure, there is, well, Below Deck: Adventure which takes viewers to Norway and sees guests, including in one instance Real Housewife Heather Gay, partaking in activities like hang gliding and rock climbing.
Below Deck is not just available in several iterations but in several viewing formats. In the UK and Ireland, viewers have a huge number of options for how to partake in the show. Analogue viewers can tune in on E4 nightly at 8 PM, view new episodes weekly during the summer months or watch back episodes on-demand on Channel 4 or Netflix. Those like me who wish to partake in the entire Bravo-sphere can watch any episode from any iteration on the specialty app Hayu, with the latest episodes weekly on Tuesdays.
The show's many formats allow for a number of viewing experiences; both passive and active. My wife and I have taken to watching old series over dinner and I’ll often do the same while I play video games. But on a week-to-week basis I am fully engaged with the programme, and it is one of the few that stops me from mindlessly scrolling. The show's format allows for either type of viewing. One can actively engage with a crew and be enthralled by their dramatics, though if you miss a dinner service or a docking you can catch up the next night. This is one of the many things that places Below Deck in line with soap operas, particularly its use of formula. Since Janice Radway’s 1984 Reading the Romance, formula has been associated with a particular type of pleasure in women’s entertainment, which soap operas have long been characterized within. Aen Ang’s 1985 study of Dallas highlights the specific pleasure derived from the formulaic nature of the soap opera. Less has been done to draw out this pattern in reality television, and indeed, much of the appeal of popular reality programmes like The Real Housewives or TLC’s 90 Day Fiancé is their function as a window into chaos.
Below Deck is, however, more popular in all its formats, and save for the recent pump in Vanderpump Rules’ ratings it has consistently been Bravo’s most popular programme for nearly ten years. It was similarly one of Channel 4’s highest rated imports in the last year.
As a media scholar and avid reality television fan, it is its use of formula which I feel has likely drawn so many viewers and which gives me a particular pleasure in watching.
The programme’s formula is not coherent per episode but rather flows from the mechanics of a “charter”, that is the specific timeframe in which a group of guests has chartered the yacht. This particularity of yachting frames the programme around specific tasks of which fans become familiar. Charters begin with a -usually hungover - crew readying the boat for guests. We get a glimpse of the upcoming guests in a meeting about their preferences before their arrival at the dock. It is at this point that viewers can decide how we might feel about them. Guests range from the unremarkable and kind, to absolute nightmares. In the nightmare guests, the viewer sees their own horrors in customer service: A woman who bangs the table screaming “lunch” repetitively, or a guest who drunkenly requests everybody be woken up so he can watch them dance at 4 PM remind us of our own nightmare customers but on a macro scale. The initial meeting tends to frame the way the guests will be perceived throughout the charter.
Once the chief steward has finished giving the guests a guided tour of the boat they must be fed. Similarly, the first meal sets the tone for the charter and the chef becomes the most important member of the crew; their skill determining the all-important tip at the end of the charter. Much of the show’s high drama centres around meal services as we watch a solo chef wrestle with making a 5-course meal alone in a tiny kitchen. Additionally, the service of the meal is important as the stewards struggle to deal with difficult guests and are on call to provide guests with unlimited drinks throughout, adding to the formula’s dynamic. Will these guests be quiet or will they get so drunk they attempt to jump off the boat in the middle of the night?
The high tension of the show is finally released when the charter ends and the crew meets to reveal the tip they are left and immediately takes their money for a night out. Here, roles are reversed as the crew pursue their own boozy antics: hooking up, crashing out early or staying up late in the hot tub. It is this pattern of tension and release that makes the programme compelling. Viewers bite their nails as the crew attempts to please the guests, and then rejoices with them as they’re set free to enjoy the other side of customer service. One of the programme's most compelling elements, the docking, follows a similar pattern. Guests watch on as the captain and crew attempt to park the 80-metre yacht and feel a sense of relief when they do not crash (except in the one scenario).
It is these familiar patterns that provide the particular comfort and pleasure of Below Deck. This, coupled with its easy accessibility and range of formats, allows the viewer to enjoy the programme as actively or passively as they choose. Though the programme is not necessarily configured as a soap opera - often touted as the one Bravo offering that men enjoy - it contains more hallmarks of the genre than any of the network’s other offerings. It is this that accounts for both its pleasure and its popularity.
About the Author
Morgan Wait is a postdoctoral researcher in University College Dublin and recently completed her PhD in Trinity College Dublin on the topic of women and television in Ireland in the 1960s. As a television historian much of her work has focused on the history of women’s programmes. She has published on this subject in Alphaville Journal. Morgan has also written about her work in a number of outlets such as RTÉ Brainstorm and Critical Studies in Television Online. Along with her PhD from TCD she also holds an M.Phil from the same institution and a BA from Salisbury University.