Friday, July 20, 2012

The Shire: Australia’s answer to Jersey Shore, The Hills, The City, Keeping With The Kardashians…


After watching the latest reality show from Network Ten I now understand why every one always bags out The Shire, or should I say ‘God’s Country’.

Watching it I felt shocked, disturbed, a little violated… More like watching Chris Lilley’s The Shire. Even a fictional Ja’mie is a breath of fresh air compared to Sophie and Vernesa. At least she had some level of intelligence. And rapper Rif Raf from the Shire has an uncanny likeness to rapper S.Mouse from Angry Boys. If it wasn’t for the social media frenzy it stirred, one could be forgiven for mistaking the show for a fictional satire.

Funnily enough, I actually watched The Hills for weeks before realising that it was a reality show. I didn’t know anything about the show or its stars and just assumed that it was a teen drama shot in a documentary style. You can’t imagine how shocked I was to find out they were all real people, and that all the storylines on the show were also real, that is, until Heidi got a boob job. 

But in The Shire, even the so-called locals aren’t real. Sophie and Vernesa are apparently from Bankstown and now living in Homebush. That’s about as far from the Shire as you can get without leaving Sydney. It baffles me. Did the producers think we wouldn’t notice? Perhaps they just thought they were too good a talent to miss? Or were they worried about the show not being multi-cultural enough for the modern Australian audience? Whatever they thought, they have demonstrated once again, that you can’t fool the audience. Audiences know crap when they see it.

What really matters is that nobody believed them. Even if a reality show or dramality’ as the show has been labelled, is semi-scripted, it still has to be believable. It’s not about what is real or not, it’s about what is believable. The producers made a fatal mistake including Sophie and Vernesa in the show because just as the mayor of the Shire, Carol Provan said, they were merely cardboard cutouts of Kim Kardashian. Caricatures, not characters; some sort of disfigured specimen of the ridiculous.

But Beckaa? Now there’s an interesting character. She was real enough for me. Sadly she’s been so overshadowed by Sophie and Vernesa that no one’s even mentioned her. If they’d just stuck with her I reckon they would have gotten the trash TV factor just right. She was juicy enough for the whole show.

Cut to:

Beckaa, a spoilt little rich girl with possible daddy issues, two gay best friends who play with her boobs on camera and then say behind her back that that her new fake nose makes her look like a pig.

Now that’s great TV!

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