The Compound offers an extended, satirical critique of reality television shows like Love Island and Survivor. Rawle argues that these types of shows, which are willing to risk contestants’ dignity to make entertaining television, could easily calculate that it is worth risking contestants’ lives as well. 

Much of the novel’s critique echoes the practices of real-world reality shows, implying that they prioritize ratings over respect or fairness. Love Island, for instance, has asked contestants to rank each other by attractiveness and required contestants to kiss one another. Throughout the novel, Lily and the other contestants similarly complete tasks designed to feed the audience’s desire to see the contestants “humiliated.” Some of these tasks replicate the inequities of broader society, as when the boys were tasked to rank the girls by attractiveness. Lily isn’t bothered by the rankings themselves, but rather by the fact that the girls had to “stand there and be told” that the boys have ranked them at all (38)—a degrading reminder that women’s social value lies in their looks. Others are designed to humiliate the individual given the task but nevertheless point to significant power imbalances, as when Susie is tasked with “shitting on the concrete” (85), or when Lily is tasked with dancing in front of others. Although Lily’s task seems easy by comparison, she knows it’s possible that the producers “[are] trying to present [her] as a comic figure, and that the viewers would be laughing at [her], dancing for a pair of shoes like a jester in the court of a king” (82). The comparison of herself to a jester underscores the novel’s class critique, suggesting the role desperation has played in her decision to join the show. Other tasks are designed to humiliate a second person, recruiting contestants to participate in the degradation of others, as when Tom sleeps with Mia for the record player. Rawle’s depiction of reality television suggests that producers are willing to humiliate contestants to entertain their audience, exploiting societal cruelties and injustices in the process.

Given this, Rawle suggests, it is not hard to imagine that a reality show would go so far as to jeopardize its contestants’ very lives. Indeed, television already has, at least indirectly: Multiple contestants from Love Island, and former host Caroline Flack, died by suicide after leaving the show. The novel alludes to this history when Lily notes that while no one has died on the show, “there was a long list now of people who’d taken their lives after the returned home” (222). However, Rawle pushes this idea much further, depicting the producers as actively endangering contestants. Despite Andrew’s belief that the producers will step in and save them from true danger, producers do not intervene at any point in the novel, even when Becca attempts to strangle Tom, who nearly beats her to death in return. This violence leads Lily to question whether it is “solely the risk of death that [the producers] measured” (260), or if they “weigh it against the relative entertainment of the scene” (260). The fact that producers allow Tom to be blinded, presumably permanently, similarly suggests that they value entertainment over the safety of contestants—an idea that ultimately underpins the novel’s broader critique of capitalism.