Netflix’s The Circle is the latest hit UK reality series to get the American remake treatment, following in a proud tradition of Stateside ripoffs that include shows like Big Brother, MasterChef, and Flirty Dancing. But The Circle is a has a distinctly techno-dystopian bent that can make a viewer feel as if they’ve stepped inside an episode of Black Mirror.

Here’s the premise: Eight contestants move into the Circle house, mixing and mingling and periodically voting out the least popular among them. It’s Big Brother with a big twist—the contestants almost never interact in real life. Instead, they communicate via the Circle social media network, and live in separate apartments, carrying out all interactions via instant message. But, as has been true since before the dawn of AIM, the strangers we're chatting with online may not be who they say they are. Basically, the show would be called Catfish if the name were still available.

It all has an almost charmingly low-effort sheen. The competitors enter with catchphrases lifted from its reality TV betters, with Rochester beefcake Joey crowing “Yeah buddy” in tones that would leave Pauly D feeling decidedly swacked. Largely offscreen, a host adds punny commentary, Love Island-style. And as contestants are eliminated, new players enter, creating a revolving door of inoffensive young hopefuls all vying for the $100,000 prize.

Don’t worry—the show isn’t just composed of shots of people hunched over keyboards. They dictate messages to each other, and their speech is cut together for an almost conversational effect. Meanwhile, the players cook and eat meals, clean their apartments, and brush their teeth, all while forming alliances and attempting to sniff out any catfish. From time to time the show attempts to liven up its inherently action-free formula with competitions like a cake decorating contest or digital trivia night.

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But just watching small scale domestic lives unfolding on The Circle is both soothing and endearing. It’s hard to dislike someone as you watch them dry their dishes. With no one present to hear them, the contestants say their internal monologues out loud, adding commentary about ongoing conversations mid-chat. It’s hard to root for our against any of them—you get the sense that you’re seeing these people as they see themselves.

Some of the similarities between the US and UK versions of the show suggest that much of the “reality“ is intensely scripted. As on the British show, one of the contestants is a guy playing as an attractive woman with help of his girlfriend's photos, and another is gay but playing as a made-up character who’s interested in the opposite sex in order to maximize alliance-building flirtations. That's just as depressing as it sounds. As far as everyone else in the game knows, the happily-partnered lesbian Karyn is Mercedeze, a younger, thinner, more conventionally attractive fiction who flirts with her male competitors.

Joey reacts to a shocking development playing out in the Circle chat. Courtesy of Netflix

Most shows quietly reflect America’s desire to see thin straights rubbing up against each other by casting said trim heterosexuals and putting them in situations that lead to them doing just that. The Circle doesn’t exactly break from this tradition—there’s Alana, the full-time model, and Antonio, the pro athlete, among other pouty and plucked players. But The Circle offers an unsubtle but occasionally moving critique of this too-familiar reality show habit. When, after being eliminated, one contestant stops by Karyn/Mercedeze's apartment (these post elimination check ins are the only time in the show’s first episodes anyone meets face-to-face), the surprise guest asks why she decided everyone. “Would you have talked to me if I looked like this?” she responds. "I did the catfish because all my life I’ve been judged. I’m not ugly, but I’m not feminine."

My hands were poised for wringing as I began watching the show. Being online all day isn’t enough—now we’ll be watching TV shows about other people who are just as lost in their technology as we are. But a few episodes in, as the cast mates seemingly made genuine connections from their separate rooms, I began to wonder if the trouble lies more in the digital realm or reality. On the show, newfound best buds Joey and Shubham declare that they would die for each other with a frank affection rarely seen between straight men in popular culture. Later, the slightly nerdy and endlessly lovable Shubham struggles when he's given the power to eliminate one of his competitors, because he’s friends with every single one of them. And in one of their first-ever conversations, two contestants are each moved to tears in their separate apartments after one tells the other of her challenging childhood in foster care. Maybe the trouble isn’t that we often tell each other lies in cyberspace, but that some truths are so hard to share in real life.

Gabrielle Bruney Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture.

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