I am embarrassed to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed watching The Only Way is Essex (enough so that I continued to watch the second episode on Hulu immediately after). Something about the fact that it is a reality and staged mashup is what got me so invested. When I was abroad my cousins and I all became fans of Made in Chelsea, which is virtually an E4 clone to this ITV2 program. Both of these shows are heavily stylized, produced, and staged. Yet the fact that these characters are not actors is what makes these shows trash TV gold. The slight difference in their production styles is how The Only Way is Essex comes clean about its departure from reality.
The show’s opening disclaimer reads, “This programme contains fast cars, big watches, and broken hearts. The tans you see might be fake but the people are all real although some of what they do has been set up purely for your entertainment.” This warning label is attached to the beginning of every episode, but with a different opening sentence that describes what will happen later. It is as if the makers of The Only Way is Essex are calling themselves out before anyone else has a chance to. Viewers of shows like the The Hills constantly lamented how staged everything appeared to be. However, it was not until the final episode when Kristen and Brody pulled back the curtain to reveal just how set up everything was. Other shows such as Keeping up with the Kardashians or Jersey Shore still claim to be true reality television, which we all know to be far from the truth. I like that ITV and The Only Way is Essex cut the crap and give it to us straight from the start. This seems like a very British thing to do, which in turn kept me coming back for more.
ITV2 is an appropriate platform for this type of show that also features other outputs such as Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, and Celebrity Juice. It is a fresh channel that mirrors E4 in its aim to attract young, hip audiences. The Only Way is Essex contributes to this goal with its slightly different spin on the overdone reality show format. I will most definitely be writing my final paper on this form of British television that has yet to be fully realized in the US. We are all aware that reality television is far from real, so why not take this approach and come clean about the carefully, composed content?
After class discussion I came to the conclusion that I accidentally watched episode 1 of season 3. I don’t know what is worse: the fact that I can’t properly operate Hulu, or that I didn’t feel out of the loop at all coming in watching this show at its third season. I am currently watching the first episode of SEASON ONE for good measure 🙂
I personally am not a fan of most reality tv shows, at least not the reality tv shows like Jersey Shore or The Hills. (I have to preface that because I do enjoy Pawn Stars and other Discovery and Animal Planet reality tv shows). But, while I still didn’t find The Only Way is Essex to be my kind of television, I do appreciate the show’s acknowledgement of it being scripted. If American shows were more willing to open themselves up as being scripted like TOWIE has, then perhaps I’d be more inclined to watch them. But where I get frustrated to an extent with reality tv is when the shows try to act as though they are one hundred percent “real.” I think that if American shows acknowledged this more then they would be more cross-culturally accepted as we discussed many of the British shows we have watched are. I may not become a fan of these types of shows, but I have to say I enjoy them more when they don’t try to act like scripted tv is “real.”
Could the kind of transparency seen on this be a holdover from the days of intense public service focus? Being open with the audience leaves them in a place where they know what to expect. While this isn’t a show on the BBC and it is probably as far removed from whatever public service ITV is required to do, but I think that the tradition of public service might have established expectations of openness and transparency that Essex tries to cater to a little bit.
I agree with you Brenna – I think that maybe the tradition of public service may be an underlying factor in the show not wanting to “lie” to us and pretend it isn’t scripted when it actually is. This might be a stretch to compare, but I think overall the British might be a bit more transparent than the Americans, as we saw from “Our War” that quite blatantly admitted that the British government had lied to the parents of the fallen soldier.
I have to admit though, isn’t half the fun of American reality TV trying to decide if a dramatic event was real or scripted? I’m not sure you’d get that aspect from “The Only Way is Essex”.