It’s third time unlucky for Australia this evening. Once again Channel Ten will dump some candles, a gaudy mansion, a chiselled torso, troughs of champagne and repeated use of the word “journey” into the televisual meat grinder and crank the handle to produce the sodden, bitter reality sausage known as The Bachelor.
But as a timely reminder of why you should feel more comfortable watching pandas being released from airlocks into deep space, UnREAL on Stan does a good job. A fictional behind-the-scenes glimpse of an equally fictional (yet disturbingly accurate) reality show, Everlasting, it makes no attempts to glorify or defend the methods used to generate the controversial ratings-hit moments. In fact, knowing the show was co-created by Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, an ex-Bachelor producer, the entire series almost comes across as a retroactive letter of resignation.
If you’re looking for a relentless beat-up of the reality TV industry, you’ll get it here, and no surprises. The series is quite happy to meet your expectations, rather than confront them or confuse them by going all meta (tempting, no doubt, for a scripted show about the reality behind a fake TV show). Instead, it suggests that the people allowing the reality TV dog to foul on the pavement of civilisation are, in fact, as bad as the shows they’re incessantly churning out.
The writers, and therefore the series they’ve created, are completely unforgiving. There isn’t a single likeable character in all seven episodes, nor an arc that’s vaguely redeeming, nor, apparently, any sort of obstacle that stands in the path of their hideous flaws. I doubt you’d find a portrayal of humanity less encouraging outside UnREAL unless George Pell went on The Bolt Report to announce a new kitten abattoir.
It’s almost unsatisfyingly bleak. Everlasting’s expletive-laden executive producer, Quinn King (Constance Zimmer), is hard to sympathise with. She’s not battling idiocy in some dull, unheard of corner of the world, à la Malcolm Tucker of The Thick of It. She’s making a terrible, glossy, fake reality TV show, she bathes in bigotry-for-profit and, even worse, she’s proud of it.
There’s little remorse or pity for the viewer’s humanity to latch on to here.
Even the audience’s “in” – reluctant producer Rachel Goldberg (played by Shiri Appleby) brought back after an on-set breakdown in the last series of Everlasting – ends up harnessing her own powers of psychological manipulation to ensure the show delivers its quota of engineered fights, tears, and raunchiness.
Whatever conscience was behind Rachel’s original breakdown is clearly providing little hindrance here, but then she does owe Quinn for nearly ruining the last series so, sorry viewer, you’ll have to give up on Rachel giving you a glimmer of hope. It’s like being tossed a life raft only for you to realise it’s a bag of inflated human skin.
This is my biggest gripe with UnREAL: we already assume the reality TV industry is despicably amoral, so creating fiendish characters by using that world as a backdrop feels a bit like cheating. Most of us imagine the advertising industry operates in a similar fashion. But that’s why Mad Men was so remarkable, providing us with characters we cared about and pitied: even Don.
However, the fact that UnREAL was co-created by someone in the know means the warts’n’all approach is also its biggest selling point. It is an unsparingly blunt assault on reality TV from someone in the actual industry, ironically making it a more honest show than anything reality TV’s ever thrown at us.
If you don’t mind being shown a world that’s predictably devoid of charm, it can be enjoyed as a sort of self-congratulatory morality porn. Certainly after binge-watching all seven episodes, I felt like knighting myself for the mere act of sitting on my sofa without orchestrating the misery of everyone around me for profit. Apparently there’s a second season in the works. I’ll be curious to see if it shifts gear and becomes a more nuanced drama, or if it continues to be an enjoyably gross spectacle, much like the kind of show it’s dissecting.
- The Bachelor (Australia) starts on Channel Ten on 29 July at 7.30pm AEST. UnREAL airs on Stan in Australia and on Lifetime in the US and in Britain
