Pick your poison

Warning: This piece contains strong opinions, brutal honesty and occasional acts of harshness. You have been warned but please bear in mind that I don't mean to deliberately offend anyone.

Well, it had to happen eventually. Four years after Big Brother Australia was canned following eight, mostly controversial seasons the show is making a comeback. Former 'Dancing With The Stars' co-host Sonia Kruger will be the new host and once again the house will be based in Dreamworld in the Gold Coast in Queensland. The show has moved from the Ten Network and into the Nine Network. I guess that means we will soon be hearing about the shenanigans that goes on in that big house full of bored, mostly young people. If past seasons are anything to go by, this should be fun - and controversial no doubt.

Meanwhile, according to the Daily Telegraph this week the Ten network are already planning a Jersey Shore-type show to be based in Sydney's Sutherland Shire. Titled The Shire, it will follow a young girl who had gone to Los Angeles to seek fame and fortune, only to end up coming home nursing a broken heart and shattered dreams. She will be accompanied by some 'secondary characters' in this show, most of whom will be her family and friends but also some 'locals' that can represent the area well and give viewers what they want (eg. Bartenders, surfer guys, bikini girls, tradies with tattoos etc).

From what I can gather from the 'plot' this show sounds like Jersey Shore with a bit of Gossip Girl and The OC thrown in. And I don't know about being 'jilted' but that whole 'young starlet unsuccessfully trying her luck in Hollywood' thing sounds like former Big Brother housemate and former Zoo Weekly model Krystal Forscutt's ill-fated trip to Los Angeles a few years ago. Maybe she will play the main character in this show.

Well, what can I say? Fans of trashy TV are going to do cartwheels and editors of Zoo Weekly are going to jump up and down with joy. I don't mean to sound like a judgemental prick but let's face it, no matter how hard you try to market these shows as harmless fun they end up getting dragged into the gutter thanks to the antics of their 'stars'. And before you call me a jerk who needs to get off his high horse, I will admit now that I do like to watch these types of shows every now and then. I enjoy a good laugh and watching people make fools of themselves all for the sake of earning their 15 minutes of fame is quite amusing, so long as it's in small doses.

Big Brother was originally intended to cram several 'everyday people' together and see how they would interract under the watchful eye of 'Big Brother', but as the seasons went by the show became more controversial thanks to some crazy antics in the house, mainly of the sexual kind. Well, what can you expect from a house full of bored people, many of whom are young and sexy? But that didn't stop the fans, and as the years and seasons went by the average contestant didn't just get younger, they became more provocative and extroverted and you had to wonder if they had any shame at all. Or in the case of other contestants, if they've ever seen the inside of a padded room.

I still remember that final season in 2008. The show was in serious trouble, following years of controversies and there were calls for it to be axed. However, new hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O thought they could revive it by casting a bunch of 'interesting people' for that series. They casted, among others, two contestants who were aged over 50, a man with a high-pitched voice and a bellydancing little person. Alas, the show was a spectacular failure and was mercifully cancelled by channel 10.

Now onto The Shire. Production has yet to begin on this show and already it is causing controversy, so much so that the people of the Sutherland Shire are divided on the matter. On the one hand, Channel 10's Head of Programming David Mott has claimed that the show will be prime time-friendly and should be tame enough to warrant a PG rating.

But Shire Mayor Carol Provan and many locals are totally against the series, fearing that it would portray the area in a negative light. A local girl who was interviewed by the Daily Telegraph pointed out that the area was still recovering from the negativity brought on by the 2005 Cronulla Riots and they didn't need something like this. Another local girl also recalled how her friend was approached via Facebook and asked if she and a few 'good-looking' friends would like to join.

Ok, I've dissected these shows enough. Perhaps it's now time for me to address the people who enjoy gawdy reality shows like this and advise them on which of the two is worth watching. Help them 'pick their poison', so to speak. On the one hand, you have a bunch of people locked up in a house for a few months. Eventually, someone is going to talk about their sex life or make a few stupid remarks, another person will act like a tool just for the sake of it and before you know it, all hell breaks loose. People seemingly try to out-moron and/or out-skank each other and the critics start wondering how such a show was allowed back on the screens in the first place.

On the other hand, you have a show that will follow a central character and help to promote the area she lives in and show how her peers live. Sounds harmless enough (well, it's supposed to be harmless), but once again it only takes one person's misconduct to throw the show off the rails. Not to sound judgemental and prudish, but seeing as how local bars will be featured and a majority of the cast will be 'young and attractive', you can expect a few drunken hijinks to occur here, as well as people trying desparately hard to become 'celebrities' and resorting to behaving like animals. I can see all the critics venting their spleens already. No wonder many locals declined the chance to appear on this show.

Me personally, I'd say if you're looking for the lesser of two evils, go with The Shire. Big Brother has already proved to be a train wreck and unless they somehow recruit a bunch of contestants who can keep it classy, you're pretty much going to see the same things you did in past seasons. So why not try something new? Yes, I know that there's a chance that this could turn into another Jersey Shore but what if the honchos at Channel 10 stay true to their word and it turns out to be pretty darn good? It's also to remember that these types of shows, for all the controversy they attract, still have their supporters. Whenever Big Brother is brought up it gets nothing but bad press. Also, people can talk all they want about the people on Jersey Shore and other similar shows but at least they aren't vilified as badly as Big Brother contestants and well, let's face it, people are still talking about the likes of Snooki, The Situation and J-Woww. When was the last time you heard someone talking about the last three people to win Big Brother? Heck, who even remembers their names?