3 Reality Shows to Shape Up Your Fall TV Viewing

Fall TV is not complete without some new reality shows to shake up the usual line-up of comedies and dramas. Here are the three shows you should be keeping an eye on.

Sweat Inc.

After leaving The Biggest Loser for a third time, fitness maverick Jillian Michaels is back with a new reality competition, Sweat Inc. But this time, it’s entrepreneurs that she’s whipping into shape. Michaels will assess and test the business plans of 27 men and women who believe they have what it takes to create the next big fitness phenomenon—think CrossFit, SoulCycle or Zumba. Once Michaels is done making them sweat, one winner will walk away with $100,000 and the ability to launch their program in Retro Fitness gyms.

As an entrepreneur yourself, are there things you wish someone had told you when you were younger?
Oh God, everything. [I’ve made] mistakes that have cost me millions and millions of dollars over the last 13 years. I would have done anything to have somebody who had already been down that road help me avoid some of those pitfalls.

Are you concerned that you might be creating a competitor to your fitness empire on this show?
The reality is I’m past the point of competition. I have a $100 million-a-year brand. For me now, the best thing I can do is collaboration. Not that anybody can be Oprah, but when you look at her career and how she brought us Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray and Suze Orman…I need to find my Dr. Phil.

Sweat Inc., premieres Tuesday, Oct. 20, 10/9c, Spike

Hellevator

Is there anything scarier than being trapped inside an elevator? How about if that elevator opened only on a series of floors featuring terrifying challenges that you must complete in order to escape?

That’s the conceit of GSN’s new horror competition, Hellevator, produced by Jason Blum, the mastermind behind pants-wetting film franchises like Paranormal Activity. The show puts three contestants in an elevator that dumps them onto different levels of an abandoned slaughterhouse where they are faced with chilling tasks—one of which includes cows’ eyeballs—before the doors shut and the elevator proceeds to the next floor. If they can make it all the way down, they’ll win up to $50,000.

“We are looking for people who say they don’t get scared easily because we want to make it challenging for ourselves,” Blum says. By the sounds of the screams in the show’s first trailer, he’s succeeded.

Hellevator, premieres Wednesday, Oct. 21, 8/7c, GSN

Rich in Faith

When Rich Wilkerson Jr. wed Kim Kardashian and Kanye West in May 2014, the Internet took swift notice of the young Miami pastor. Read one Buzzfeed headline: “Wait, the Pastor That Married Kim and Kanye Is Super Hot.”

“I try to find those articles and put ’em on my wife’s tackboard so she can be encouraged to love me even better,” Wilkerson jokes.

But the breathless fascination will surely continue later this year when Rich in Faith, a new series following Wilkerson, debuts. The show chronicles the preacher to the stars’ work and home life as he transitions from associate pastor at his father’s church—where he met West—to launching his own nondenominational Christian church, Vous, in Miami. “You’re going to see transparency and vulnerability, for sure,” Wilkerson, 31, says of his personal journey. “And all of that always creates some drama.”

This is reality TV, after all. So maybe we’ll see a table flip? “You never know,” he says. “Jesus came in and flipped some tables every once in a while.”

Rich in Faith, premieres Wednesday, Dec. 2, 10/9c, Oxygen