Mark Wright and Lauren Goodger, Two of the 'Stars' of The Only Way Is Essex
Geordie Shore, The Only Way Is Essex, Made In Chelsea are the newest in a string of British regional reality shows. Each show follows the lives of a number of young adults, with the viewer watching as they make new relationships, and continue their careers. So far it sounds relatively tame, that is until you actually watch the shows and realise these people are arguably the most unlikable people you will ever see. To exacerbate my detest for these shows, The Only Way Is Essex received the You tube Viewers Choice BAFTA Award earlier this year. That’s right, the people of Britain felt that The Only Way Is Essex deserved an award. Shameful.
It all started with a number of American reality shows like The Hills and The City from which the basic concept of following rich young adults going about their menial and pointless lives was born. These shows became instantly popular overseas as well as in America, and of course as they became more popular, the producers felt the need to set up certain parts of the show, with viewers being told before most of these shows that “Certain scenes have been constructed for the viewers entertainment”, quite a mysterious message, and one that made me hope these people were actors, alas, these are real people (real possibly not being the best word to describe them).
British television was relatively late to this trend but it has now been pursued full force after the success of The Only Way Is Essex, with two more regional based reality shows starting in the last few months. Though the shows share the same basic formula they all have slight variations, with TOWIE (you don’t understand how much that abbreviation hurts me) following the lives of teenagers and young adults in Essex as they do pretty much nothing in particular. The show tries to have some sort of plot with the viewer following the relationships and jobs of the cast, in reality this translates as watching moronic individuals flitter between different relationships, and talk about fake tan and breast implants.
Though I can appreciate the entertainment value of watching them blunder through social encounters, what embarrasses me is the fact that these self obsessed, and talent less individuals represent my country on television. What worries me further is that the lifestyle these individuals example on television is a lifestyle that Britain’s young people seemingly want to emulate, a damning statement of the youth of today.
Made In Chelsea was the next regional show to air, with channel 4 hoping to mimic the massive success of ITV2’s TOWIE, and whereas TOWIE was a show following a group of spoilt, but still relatively relatable young adults, Made In Chelsea focuses on a group of obnoxious Chelsea residents, who are of course ‘total darlings’ and love their diamonds, polo, and fashion (with the word fashionable being used to justify the most ridiculous of things nowadays).You could probably summarise the show pretty succinctly as TOWIE for snobs, whereas Essex was boob jobs and botox, Made in Chelsea is diamonds and animal fur. They are both filled with materialistic, selfish, judgemental, ignorant and pretentious wannabe celebrities.
The newest reality programme to grace our television sets is Geordie Shore, a spin off of the American Jersey Shore, it retains the basic formula in which eight individuals are put into a house together, and provided with jobs, alcohol, and every possible chance to make a tit out of themselves on television. Which is exactly what they do.
Though I don’t want be judgemental of the individuals on these shows, but I find myself wondering what people are financing and producing these television shows, and I just feel plain sorry for the cameramen.
Looking at this further, the behaviour of these individuals on these television shows is uniformly embarrassing, with there being one (barely) normal individual on each show, and the fact that they are professionally filmed and are broadcast does nothing to validate the behaviour, and not only to the morons on the tv show.
I’m not sure where my detest for these television shows originates from, but on further thought I suppose I could blame the fact that not only do these shows validate the behaviour of morons, but they also example moronic behaviour to a nations youth, a youth which is already bordering on brain dead.
By Joseph Weeks
Tagged in The Only Way Is Essex Made in Chelsea