The part of Dawn was written with Brooke Smith in mind. Minahan had seen the actress in an off-Broadway show, fashioned the character around her and sent her the script. Later, they workshopped a couple of scenes at Sundance. “Brooke was totally fearless and put a lot of herself into the character,” says the director. “She became obsessed with Cops - she watched it all the time, and would call me and say, ‘You won’t believe this…’”

Produced by Killer Films together with Open City Films, the outfit behind last year’s equally offbeat hit Chuck & Buck, Series 7 is less a satire on the limits to which reality TV has gone than an affectionate exploration of the whole medium of television. Sure, the film is critical of the machinery that turns these ordinary people into public figures, as in the scene where the cameraman refuses to stop filming Dawn’s labour - a breach delivery - to open the door to the hastily summoned paramedics. And it mixes romantic revolt with some distinctly black comedy (Connie, the nurse coerced into delivering Dawn’s baby, is in fact a contender who had been about to kill her). But Minahan isn’t out to diss television - least of all reality television.

“I love television,” he says. “It’s the most modern form of story-telling. I love advertising copy: it’s the best kind of poetry. But most of all I love movies. So I used all this language to tell my story. Right now, it seems Hollywood blockbusters have become banal, and the idea of ‘reality’ - real people’s lives - has been elevated to some kind of spectacle.”

So Minahan did everything he could to replicate the atmosphere of a TV show. “I interviewed people that I knew were working - or had worked - producing tabloid TV shows like Cops,” he says. “I collected material and got a feel for the world they worked in. At the same time, I completely immersed myself in reality television. I collected and viewed hours and hours of tapes of The Real World, Road Rules, America’s Most Wanted, Real Stories of the Highway Patrol, America’s Funniest Home Videos - you name it, I watched it. At a certain point, I became really obsessed by them and couldn’t stop watching. They’re so intrusive, so raw… yet all theatre, all showbiz.”

Concludes Minahan: “My story reminds people of a lot of things. But I don’t think you’ve ever seen this story told in quite this way before. Series 7: The Contenders is a cautionary tale that takes a look at the fiction of ‘reality’.”