LOS ANGELES — “I Am Cait,” the new E! reality series starring Caitlyn Jenner, begins at 4:32 a.m. with Ms. Jenner wide-awake. Looking exhausted, she stares into a camera and agonizes over the stress in becoming a sudden role model for transgender people everywhere. “I hope I get it right,” she says, twice.
It’s a sobering moment, one of many in the first episode of “I Am Cait,” which will make its debut on Sunday. The show chronicles Ms. Jenner’s new life as Caitlyn, a person the world previously knew as Bruce Jenner, the Olympic star and the patriarch of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” for 10 seasons.
But the new show also provides a challenge for Bunim/Murray Productions, the company best known for the freewheeling antics of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” not the sensitive and potentially explosive issues surrounding Ms. Jenner.
Her transition has been a major cultural moment, with a widely praised rollout — an interview with Diane Sawyer in April, the E! “About Bruce” special in May, a Vanity Fair cover story in June and a moving speech at the ESPYs last week.
But the reality show is a more complicated affair: It’s eight one-hour episodes of Ms. Jenner educating herself on transgender issues, along with a dash of Kim and Kanye, Kylie and Khloe.
In other words, it may be Ms. Jenner’s show, but the Kardashian DNA remains, for good and ill. Ms. Jenner’s children from her first two marriages have refused to participate because of Bunim/Murray’s involvement, according to the Vanity Fair profile. Brandon Jenner, who has appeared on “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” described Bunim/Murray’s shows — “Total Divas,” “Bad Girls Club” and “Project Runway” — as “a circus” and said he felt that the producers would develop a show that would be the “the opposite of inspiration.” (Ms. Jenner declined to comment for this article.)
To answer this criticism, Bunim/Murray will have to prove it can deliver a show that doesn’t exploit or sensationalize its subject. And, if it passes that test, it must pass another: Can it have an effect without being a bore?
“I think our track record speaks for itself,” said Gil Goldschein, the chief executive of Bunim/Murray. “When you work with someone for that long, there are relationships and a trust factor, and if you’re dealing with what Caitlyn is dealing with, I think it’s very important to work with people you trust.”
In the premiere episode, there are lighthearted scenes, including Ms. Jenner taking Kim Kardashian on a tour of her closet (Kanye West, who is married to Kim, also makes an appearance), and lamenting that she needs a sports bra while playing tennis.
But it also features extensive talk about the suicide rate among transgender people, and Ms. Jenner visits the mother of a trans teenager who killed himself. Ms. Jenner also reveals her new look, post-transition, to her mother and sisters, and has them sit down with a counselor to help navigate thorny territory like how Ms. Jenner’s mother can reconcile her daughter’s decision with the Bible.
“I often joke on the set, ‘Oh my god, this is like for PBS,’ ” said Jeff Jenkins, an executive at Bunim/Murray and an executive producer for “I Am Cait” and “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.” “There aren’t sisters screaming at each other, arguing over a blouse. It’s a pure documentary about a human being starting a major new chapter in their life.”
Bunim/Murray has been here before. It made television history in 1993, when it cast Pedro Zamora, an H.I.V.-positive Cuban immigrant for the third season of MTV’s “The Real World.” Mr. Zamora’s openness about his H.I.V. status and his relationships with his roommates (the understanding Rachel, the irritating Puck) made him a sensation and earned the show plaudits. He died just hours after the final episode of the season aired.
Jonathan Murray, a founder of Bunim/Murray, said that the former President Bill Clinton told him that the show did more for AIDS education than his administration could ever do.
Bunim/Murray Productions was founded in 1987 by Mr. Murray, a local TV news programmer, and Mary-Ellis Bunim, a soap opera producer. (She died in 2004.) The company is widely considered a pioneer in the reality TV show genre, and when Bunim and Murray developed “The Real World” for MTV in the early 1990s, they had lofty goals.
“We had this old-fashioned idea, this sort of liberal idea, that if you put people together who normally wouldn’t live together, yes there will be conflict, but out of that conflict will come growth,” Mr. Murray said.
But over the years, “The Real World” became less known for stories like Mr. Zamora’s and more for wild and mostly forgettable cast members splashing around in hot tubs. Other Bunim/Murray offerings have come along, including “Dr. Steve-O”; “One Ocean View”; the Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie show “The Simple Life”; and, in 2008, the company took over producing duties for “Project Runway.”
Mr. Murray defended Bunim/Murray’s credentials by pointing to productions like the warmly received documentaries “Valentine Road” and “Autism the Musical,” both of which appeared on HBO. In addition, he discussed Katelynn Cusanelli, a transgender woman who appeared as a cast member of “The Real World” in 2009.
(Mr. Murray must also suspect there’s a moment here: He said he was developing a show on mothers with children who are “expressing gender issues.”)
But there are also hints of repentance. Mr. Murray recently donated $6.7 million to the University of Missouri to start a documentary journalism program, and thanked the university for “taking some of my dirty reality money.”
The story of how Bunim/Murray became the producers of Ms. Jenner’s show began about a year ago. Mr. Jenkins said that one of his field producers on “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” called him to say that Ms. Jenner needed to see him immediately. The rumors were true: She was going to transition.
“I thought that someone was punking me or playing an April Fool’s joke,” Mr. Jenkins said.
Mr. Murray added: “I felt a little silly at first because I kept saying, ‘Oh you can’t believe those tabloids.’ ”
Talk of a show did not happen until or a month or two later, Mr. Jenkins said, but once Ms. Jenner got to the core idea that she could help people, she wanted to do one.
“She would have been so hounded for the story,” Mr. Jenkins said, “and that’s why, in my understanding, she decided, I’ll tell the story: So I can hopefully tell all of it in the right way.”
But Mr. Jenkins had to change the way things were done: “I Am Cait” became more about “turning the camera on, and what happens, happens” and less concerned with “chasing down or trying to accentuate” dramatic moments as happened on the Kardashian show.
Ms. Jenner has a lot of editorial control, and the producers defer to her choices, almost to a fault. Mr. Jenkins said that Ms. Jenner probably had more control than her ex-wife, Kris Jenner, does with “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.” (Kris Jenner does not have a producing credit on “I Am Cait.”)
“With ‘Keeping Up,’ if a cast member says, ‘No, I don’t want to shoot that,’ I say, ‘Well you need to shoot that, you need to share that, that’s what you signed up for, this is a reality show, that’s your job,’ ” Mr. Jenkins said. “With Caitlyn? No, she’s in the driver’s seat. I do not push back on things like that. It’s such a sensitive subject and I feel Caitlyn has an inner compass of what’s right and what’s wrong and we’re following her lead sincerely.”
The producers are aware that hourlong sermons about the hardships of transgender people may not be what E! viewers are craving. “We don’t want it just to be some kind of educational lecture,” Mr. Murray said. But they said they felt that they had struck the right balance here.
“We have a lot faith in our subject,” Mr. Murray said. “What Caitlyn is going through has enough inherent drama and enough inherent story that we don’t need to mess with it.”