‘The Neighbourhood’ saw real-life households compete to win €292,000 prize
Graham Norton says he feels terrible about the failure of his flagship reality show The Neighbourhood.
The Irish star made a rare venture into reality TV with the ITV series, which centred on a fictional street where real-life households must compete to be named the most popular and to win £250,000 (€292,138).
The series was poised to be a big hit, with the broadcaster heavily publicising The Neighbourhood in the lead-up to its April 2026 premiere. The launch was also given a coveted time slot, airing in the middle of the two-part I’m A Celebrity… South Africa final.
Despite the heavy push by ITV, however, Norton has now admitted that the series “bombed”.
In a new interview, the chat show host said he “felt bad” over its underperformance.
“You feel terrible about the production team, who worked on that thing for two years, and then the audience goes, no thank you,” he told The Times, noting that “what makes this business interesting is you cannot manufacture a hit”.
Only weeks after its launch, The Neighbourhood was pulled from its prime-time 9pm viewing slot and relegated to a later start time of 10.45pm. The news came amid reports in The Sun that viewership of the show had dwindled to just 500,000 viewers by its third episode.
The flop would have come as a blow to the broadcaster, which was hoping that The Neighbourhood might soar to levels of popularity attained by the BBC with The Traitors and its celebrity spin-off.
In a three-star review, The Independent’s Katie Rosseinsky compared the series – somewhat unfavourably – to The Traitors. “There are some enjoyably big characters here […]” she wrote.
“But for the most part, there is none of the psychological intrigue of, say, a Traitors round table, although presumably things will become more tense the longer the residents have been stuck in The Neighbourhood – and the closer they get to the prize money.
“For now, though, there’s not quite enough to ensure that viewers will want to stick around for the full duration of the tenancy.”
Elsewhere in the Times interview, Norton said he “never takes the chat show for granted” in light of last year’s news that The Graham Norton Show had been renewed for three more years.
“It’s very gratifying that the BBC wants us to keep going until 2029,” he said. “They’ve just got rid of Celebrity Mastermind and Blankety Blank, so you’re aware that they can look at long-running shows and go, ‘You know what? Thank you very much, but we’ve enjoyed you enough now.’ So we’re very grateful it still has an audience.”
He also gave readers an insight into his personal life, revealing that he and his husband Jono McLeod have a secret dog.
“Nobody knows his name or what breed he is,” Norton said, before going on to explain his reasons for keeping his pet “not public-facing”.
“I realised after my previous dogs, Madge and Bailey, died that if you put your dogs out there in the world, when they die there’s a lot of talking about dead dogs,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Why am I here talking about my dead dogs?’ It was too personal.”