Brace yourself to be vajazzled by the invasion of the orange people!
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| "How to apply a vajazzle..." |
Reality TV meets Melrose Place with a bit of Lauren from the Catherine Tate Show, The Only Way Is Essex (TOWIE, for those in the know) is a bizarre and stilted mix of scripted drama and reality television. Brash and certainly not "bovvered", the show is unashamedly fake: from the people, the situations and their cars, right down to their orange skins. Delighting in shallowness, the camera follows a collection of flashy young men and women with a predilection for fake tans, flashy cars and the swallowing of consonants. Meet philandering Mark while he works his guns at the gym, ponders fit birds and shops for man bags with his friend Arg. And Kirk, who is considering getting "ta-oos" and vapid Amy and Sam who contemplate the vajazzlement of their privates without getting glue on their bits.
TOWIE might be new to us South Africans, but back home in the UK it is a smash hit and currently in its fifth season. And its not hard to understand why. You only need to visit any airport or mall to get a taste of how disturbingly trashy the general populace of any country is. And you only need to take a peek at what passes for prime time television to know that good writers and skilled directors aren't nearly as important as buff heroes with perfect teeth and sassy heroines with the right measurements who live idealised lifestyles. Which is probably why TOWIE skips right over any semblance of substance and rather serves up flash and sass and sparkly teeth and drenches it in oodles of low fat trashiness - to the delight of the masses.
Get you weekly hit of saccharine sauciness or stare in dumbstruck amazement as an intellectual black hole opens on your television screen on BBC Entertainment this Thursday at 20h30.
