www.kiwiflatmates.com

Two guys, three girls, a house full of booze. What are the chances nothing's gonna happen?

– Narrator Sarah Rudkin

The publicist has just come into me and told me that we've got some idiot that's actually hacked into our site, and he's downloading the streaming section of our members area. He's got some sort of agenda. I'm now going to see the police to see what they can do about it . . . the computer people are actually looking at plugging that hole. 

– Colin Stephenson gets some bad news about his Kiwiflatmates website

There's no tampering with the cameras, okay? You can't cover them with objects, T-shirts, bras, panties or anything . . . you can only leave this property for four hours a week, which isn't much. You can chop up those four hours, but only for four hours a week okay? There's gonna be voting by the public for their favourite flatmate, and the winner will receive a prize — cash. The flatmate with the least votes will be asked to leave immediately. 

– Presenter Louise Wallace runs through some of the house rules

..we've believed in it all along, and we've prepared to put in the money to make it work. And there are many ways to make money out of a project like this as we see it, and that is basically a sponsorship through the entire site, cameras, personal endorsements of products, membership and more importantly actually selling a format worldwide.

– Kiwiflatmates.com co-creator Colin Stephenson, on the business side of the project

I really don’t know that much about computers aye. But I have the feeling that if you were a real freak and you spent most of the time with your computer and you were quite interested by what's happening on the site, it would not be hard to freeze frame it, print it out sent it into amateur porn, whip bang there you go.

– Flatmate Paula Watkins on the potential for viewers to screenshot the livestream

Flatmates did a 67 percent share in its time slot — which I’m extremely proud of — you just don’t get those shares now. It was a nutty reality one-off: mad but exhilarating.

– Director Mark McNeill on the success of this documentary

Last Thursday, the flatmates moved in to an Auckland mansion wired with cameras broadcasting their lives direct onto the internet. Areas such as the spa pool, bedrooms and bathrooms can only be accessed by people who pay $US20 ($44.50) a month.

– NZ Herald writer Louisa Cleave, 5 September 2000

Believing the site to be ill thought out, badly executed and far too expensive for an advertising laden site we at 'K1w1 W3b' have released a site at www.geocities.com/kiwiflatmates which allows anyone to view the "members only" portions of the site easily and for free. This is thanks to an obvious security flaw in the www.kiwiflatmates.com web site.

– Hacker David Christoff, in a 4 September 2000 press release

Viewers will be able to interact with the five 20-somethings through a chatroom. In a similar system to overseas reality shows, people will be able to vote for their favourite flatmate and the one with the least votes after three weeks will leave. A new person will join the group and the three-week cycle will start again.

– The NZ Herald writer Louisa Cleave, 1 September 2000

There's one other person always in the house, hiding in the basement control room. The flatmates never see them, but they're always there: 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Someone is watching and recording everything they see.

– Narrator Sarah Rudkin