Dear newsletter subscribers,

Good evening! I just read that tomorrow is the 131st anniversary of the journalist Nellie Bly returning to New Jersey, having traveled around the world in 72 days—faster than Jules Verne's fictional character made the trip.

Bly wrote about her trip; who would have thought that, 111 years later, in 2001, people would start traveling around the world for a reality TV show. And who would have thought, just one year ago, that we'd soon be living in a time when The Amazing Race couldn't be filmed. Alas!

Other shows have been able to be filmed recently, even if they were delayed, and so we have a dozen reality shows premiering this week, along with some one-off documentaries. So, I'll end this brief trip into history and get on with the preview of this week's reality TV debuts.