Celebrity Reality Shows
Why do we love watching these celebrity train wrecks reality shows? How many celebreality shows are on TV right now? Here in the US, there’s dozens of them. Celebrity Apprentice, Celebrity Fit Club, Celebrity Rehab, Dancing with the Stars, I’m a Celebrity; Get me out of here, the Kardashians and all their spin offs, all the different Real Housewives, the Girls Next Door and the list just goes on…
Of course there’s never any A list stars on these shows. They’re busy working, or, have a team that doesn’t want them doing reality. The only time they’re allowed to speak in public is when doing publicity on a talk show and they have all the questions prepared up front.
Which is what makes Celebreality TV so fascinating. You never know what’s going to happen. For the most part, it’s not scripted. It’s filmed over a few weeks, so people can’t be all sunshine and light and fake being fabulous Miss Congeniality the whole time. You get to see people’s somewhat real personalities come through. I say somewhat, because it is TV and these are mostly actors. They are going to ham it up for the cameras and of course the editors are going to cut stuff up for dramatic effect.
Who doesn’t love watching Celebrities explode on shows like Celebrity Apprentice? Or take a bunch of has-beens and throw them into a house together like on the Surreal Life. I know there’s a bunch of high brow folk who claim they don’t watch anything that’s not on the ABC, but we know reality TV is their dirty little pleasure too. I know they watch, because even though they claim they don’t, they can list all the reasons why, including all the best bits of each episode…
We get to see our favourite TV stars and find out what they’re really like. We get to see if they’re total pretentious dickheads or if they’re just like you and me. Some stars are total Divas. Others are surprisingly down to earth. Also, the other great thing about Celebrity competition type shows is that instead of trying to win cash for themselves, the celebs are raising money for charity. What charity doesn’t need a couple thousand dollars and untold amounts of free publicity? The Hey Dad..! cast did Celebrity Family Fued back in the day and we got a day trip to Brissie and raised money for (I think it was) the Children’s Hospital. We didn’t win the big prize. I was the final quiz person, but we did raise a couple thousand dollars. They gave me a telephone for my appearance. I swapped it with Julie who actually needed a phone. They had giver her a beautiful gold fountain pen I liked much better. 😉 I remember it was fun because that was back in the day when you actually got to fly first class. Back when Ansett was still in operation. I think the only other time I flew first class was on a trip to the Logies. Studios just don’t pay for good seats anymore. 🙁
Anyway, I’m pretty excited to see an Australian version of Celebrity Apprentice popping up. They’ve already got Pauline Hanson, who was on Dancing With The Stars. There’s some pretty good innuendos about who else will be on there. I’m not sure they’re going to have the same heated arguments that the US version does. Aussie’s are way too laid back for that kind of drama…. Still, I hope they end up showing the Aussie version here in the US.
I wonder what other kinds of Celebreality shows are in the works? Maybe they could do a Surreal Life Australia. I know just the has-been for that one. 😉
