THE Circle sees players communicate via a social media platform - and it's a battle to be voted the most popular. Georgia Humphreys finds out more from the presenters

WHEN Big Brother hit our screens back in 2000, no one had seen anything quite like it before. Fast forward to the present day, and that TV show's future is in doubt - but there's a new reality series everyone's bound to be talking about.

Described as a popularity contest, The Circle will air every day on Channel 4 for three weeks, with players filmed living in separate apartments in a London block of flats.

Here's the catch: they won't meet each other face-to-face until they're knocked out of the game. The only way they can talk to each other is through a specially-designed, voice-activated social media platform. And, at the end of the series, the most popular player will win up to £50,000.

"Nobody has seen social media looked at in this way," says a smiley Alice Levine, who, along with her Radio 1 colleague Maya Jama, will be presenting the show.

"Everyone's on an app, everybody is filtering their lives, to varying degrees. Why not acknowledge that?"

All the players can see of each other are the photos they have chosen to put up on their profile page. During a conversation on The Circle, the other player can immediately read what they've said and talk back to them - just like social media in real life. As the series - described as a mix of Big Brother, Black Mirror and Catfish - progresses, unpopular players can be blocked. When this happens, they're out of the game.

How people try and win the popularity contest is up to them. They could, for example, choose to present an entirely fictional version of themselves. Of course, this can happen in the real world, on apps like Instagram - most of us are guilty of only sharing highlights of our lives with our followers.

"I post pictures on holiday, but I don't post pictures when I've opened my suitcase when I've got home and it's exploded and I've got to wash all my dirty laundry," notes Levine, 32, also known for co-presenting hit podcast, My Dad Wrote A Porno. "You choose what part of your life you show."

Exactly who will be taking part in The Circle is being firmly kept under wraps for now. But what we do know is the players won't already be social media influencers, or bloggers with a big following.

"It's everyday people," explains 24-year-old Jama. "Basically, who uses Facebook? Your mum, your nan, your auntie, your niece - anybody."

"To feel timely, you want different kinds of stories," suggests Levine. "Perhaps in reality shows that you've seen before, it feels like there's one kind of person, or one type of story that unravels. With The Circle, we're going to see a lot of texture, and a lot of different game play. But also a lot of different personalities."

The Circle being a completely new concept does add a certain amount of pressure on the presenters, but Jama doesn't find it scary. "It will be interesting to observe humans in that kind of environment - even if you're not on social media and you've never used Facebook in your life, you'd be intrigued as to how it works."

When it comes to using social media in real life, Jama, who is in a relationship with rapper Stormzy, admits she feels a responsibility to her followers (on Instagram, that's an impressive 680,000 people, by the way). "I will do personal messages on Instagram stories where I'm like, 'I took about 100 shots to get this one shot that I just uploaded, this is not how I woke up'," she elaborates. "A little bit of honesty is nice, because it's easy to look online on somebody's profile and be like, 'Wow, everything's perfect all the time'. And my life definitely isn't perfect all the time."

While scrolling online is an enjoyable part of many of our daily routines, it can deal self-esteem a blow, as we compare our lives to other people's.

"Social media's not going anywhere so to ignore it exists would be naive, and to ignore that young people enjoy being on it would also be something that's difficult to deny," says Levine. "But having a healthy relationship with it is something we should talk about more. I think The Circle does start a lot of those conversations about identity, how we represent ourselves and how we want to be seen."

  • The Circle starts on Channel 4 on Tuesday.