Finally. A reality show that's actually worth watching.

Now here’s a reality show we can get behind.

Reality television shows tend to fall into the “secret shame” category, but here’s one we’re actually pleased to have watched.

Five-part reality series Sweatshop — Deadly Fashion follows the journey of Norwegian fashion bloggers Anniken Jorgensen, Frida Ottesen and Ludvig Hambro as they experience life as textile workers in Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.

Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten orchestrated the social experiment, in which the participants — all under the age of 21 — experienced the terrible living and working conditions of a Cambodian garment factory for a month.

The online series has now been viewed more than 1.5 million times, and it’s starting conversations across the globe about the awful conditions in sweatshops.

During the series, the young women were made to spend a night in a worker’s cramped apartment, work long hours in poor conditions, and grow hungry on a daily wage of just a few dollars.

And while the young Norwegians begin their fashion adventure curious but unaffected, reality soon set in.

“You think you know; you think you know it’s bad,” Hambro said on the show. “But you don’t know how bad it is before you see it.”

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In Episode 3, the Norwegian group reported to their first shift at the factory, and after several hours of work Ottenson described the experience as “an eternal vicious cycle”.

“It never stops. You just sit here and sew the same seam over and over again,” she said. I’ve been here for over two hours, just doing the same (thing). I’m hungry and tired and my back aches.”

Hambro concluded at the end of the series: “The truth is that we are rich because they are poor.

“We are rich because it costs us €10 ($A14.28) to buy a t-shirt at H&M.”

Jørgensen, 17, is now criticising H&M for not paying higher wages.

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Cambodia’s garment industry employs more than 500,000 people — and, as Maeve Galvin of Better Work Global told Mamamia, 80 per cent of garment workers are women.

“In many cases they are young women, passing from the hands of the family patriarch to those of the market patriarch, who loves the lower wages they are willing to accept,”Development studies academic Alessandra Mezzadri elaborated in an article on The Conversation. “Once in the factories, they face harsh and intense working conditions and extremely low wages.”

Ms Mezzadri added that “violence and exploitation” as “pretty much the norm” for these women.

Watch a trailer for the series — subtitled in English — here. (Post continues after gallery):

While Cambodia was once seen as a model for other textile-producing countries, worsening safety standards and shocking wages last year prompted widespread protests, during which police shot and killed five factory workers, Quartz reports.

The government eventually raised the minimum wage from about $A100 a month to about $A161, but that wage in the the south-east Asian country still falls a long way short of a living wage, organisation Clean Clothes reports. According to one report, factory workers in Cambodia consume just half the recommended amount of daily calories.

Ms Galvin told Mamamia that Better Work Global commonly encounters “issues related to health and safety at work” and “excessive working hours” in garment factories across the eight countries it monitors, including Cambodia.

And while many factories are now treating its workers fairly — as labour rights organisations work to implement the rules set out in core international and national labour law — “others are far behind,” Ms Galvin said.

So, go on: Add Sweatshop — Deadly Fashion on your “to watch” list.

It’s one reality TV show you can actually feel good about getting behind.

 You can find the series here or find out more about the work of Better Work Global here.