Two Words, One Answer.
ABC-TV reality
 #101 $1.99 OK, I just had to repost this review from Australia. Far better than anything I could write myself. Hope you all enjoy, and I take no credit for this beautiful piece of literary criticism (or should that be TV Review, whatever....). I did have a quick look after reading this review, and it's truely as awful as the review describes. Why anyone would actually pay to watch this beggars belief. "SO HERE'S a brief email I received from my friend Kevin: ''If you didn't catch last night's premiere of True Beauty, can I please direct your attention to it? Horrendous TV that is completely and utterly unwatchable AND unmissable. I threw a shoe at my TV, it was that good. And that's quite a feat considering I was already in bed and had to get out of said bed to retrieve a shoe from my closet in order to throw it. ''Ten of the most pretentious, plastic-looking 'beauties' given a range of tasks to see who is the best looking then secretly recorded to see who has the most 'inner beauty' ... or, in fact, who is the least reprehensible. If you haven't seen it, then I shan't ruin the experience for you. If you have seen it, then my work is done and I bid you farewell. ''P.S. Could you also work into your weekly column how the amount of time spent watching TV in the bedroom is directly inversely proportional to the amount of sex one gets?'' It's nice when your friends know exactly what you might like to watch on a night in, isn't it? Also, when they pretty much write Backchat on your behalf, leaving you with little to do but eat milk-bottle lollies and stare into space thinking about what Monica Bellucci might look like in the nude. Remind me next time I'm out that I owe Kevin a jug of something devilish. Anyway, though his intentions were undoubtedly honourable, I suspect Kevin may have been in a jolly generous mood (read: high) when he described True Beauty as ''utterly unmissable TV''. Perhaps, in a more sane moment, he might have added ''... if, of course, you're stuck in full-body plaster in a hospital ward and there's no way for you to reach the buzzer to alert the night nurse that you might perhaps need the channel changed immediately''. Or even: ''Just kidding Hardy, LOL! Except the bit about time spent watching TV in the bedroom being inversely proportional to the amount of sex one gets. I'd still quite like to figure that one out.'' The only thing ''utterly unmissable'' about True Beauty is the amount of pert boobies on display and, even then, you could probably see just as many if you idly flicked through a copy of Zoo Weekly or asked your cousin who lives in Tamworth nicely. Yes, another reality television series worms its way into our consciousness and has its way with us and leaves us feeling ravaged and unloved and making the long, slow Walk of Shame(tm) back to normality with our lipstick askew and high heels in hand. True Beauty is one of the more cunning on offer, as it somehow purports to be turning the entire notion of ''beauty'' on its head - it's not about what these vacuous gimps look like, you see, but how they treat other human beings. Get it? The fact that they loll around the pool shirtless saying things like, ''I have the eyes ... I have the hair ... I have the body'' and, ''I probably check myself out three times a day'' is just a front for a deep and involved journey towards spiritual awareness. You guys! Are you blind? CAN YOU NOT SEE THE INHERENT GENIUS INVOLVED HERE? Last week's episode really kicked a few goals involving, as it did, teaming the ''beauties'' (I really do use that term loosely - most of the contestants look like the sort of brooding, tan-saturated douchebags you see buying seashell craft at St Kilda markets before nipping off to Going Going Gone to do something rude with terracotta gardenware) with some feisty pensioners for a photo shoot about beauty transcending age. This concept seemed lost on a couple of the bohunks (''I see senior citizens come out and I'm all, like, how does this correlate with being beautiful?'' puzzled one), though, luckily, the old folk were pretty much equal in the jerk stakes to their youthful counterparts. ''I'm Magda, I'm 63 and I just had a facelift!'' squealed one grandmotherly type, while a silver fox in high pants tastefully confessed: ''Hi, I'm John, I'm 68 and my last girlfriend was 25.'' Why they didn't just lock both old and young twits in a room together and not allow them out until they displayed a modicum of grace and intelligence I don't know. Perhaps there were budgetary restrictions. I don't even know why I'm writing about True Beauty. Does the concept not just fold in on itself like complicated origami - i.e. that anyone who would bother participating in the sort of reality show they believe is celebrating their comely external attributes essentially rules themselves out of the ''inner beauty'' race? All those nice people you see nominated for community and bravery awards wouldn't be caught dead oiling their abs around a swimming pool. So while I thank Kevin for the brief diversion, I'm happy enough missing out on the ''utterly unmissable'' grubby little world of True Beauty for the rest of my natural-born days. And if anyone can answer that ''sex/TV'' question of his, my email address is below. I don't doubt he'd be very grateful. |
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