Nothing real about these housewives

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Cast of The Real Housewives of Vancouver (POSTMEDIA)

There are certain things that should not, in civilized society, be declared proudly in public.

In fact, if they must be uttered at all, they ought to be accompanied by an appropriate measure of embarrassment.

You know, things like, "Yes, that is my 1977 AMC Pacer," or "Hey, that was me who just broke wind in the elevator," or "I'm a Toronto Maple Leafs fan."

Or this other necessarily humiliating statement, as delivered with perversely mistaken pride late last month by one of this country's specialty-cable networks: "Canada, meet your biggest new stars ... The Real Housewives of Vancouver."

This cringe-inducing announcement came in a press release, in a fancy box, with a preview DVD of the new Slice network series The Real Housewives of Vancouver (which will be unleashed on Canadian TV viewers early next month) -- all neatly packaged up in a manner that suggests the folks who sent it really are proud to have done so.

"There's an insatiable appetite for the Housewives series and we are thrilled to launch the first-ever Canadian edition," Shaw Media's top programmer, Barbara Williams, enthuses in the accompanying press release.

"We're proud to be a part of such a successful production franchise," adds the show's executive producer, Louise Clark, referring to the fact that this Canadian-made "reality" spinoff joins an ever-expanding stable of Real Housewives titles that have showcased the painfully contrived misbehaviour of overprivileged and under-mannered women in such U.S. locales as Orange County, New Jersey, Atlanta, Beverly Hills and Miami.

Thrilled? Seriously? Proud? Really? How? Why? Huh?

Have these people never actually watched the shows that they're now spinning off for Canadian-dollars-profit purposes? Clearly not, or they wouldn't be expressing pride or excitement about this accomplishment.

The Real Housewives of ... wherever is a cluster of carbon-copy shows whose popularity is as inexplicable as it is undeniable. The various incarnations of Real Housewives have made buckets of money for their producers by creating not-really-real situations that invite viewers to mock and laugh at the same characters they ever so slightly envy.

These aren't smart shows. They're unapologetically stupid shows. But they offer base-level escapist entertainment that many TV watchers clearly can't resist. Money talks, which is why The Real Housewives keep shrieking.

In a medium whose voracious appetite for content has driven TV producers ever deeper into exploitation and lowest-common-denominator territory, and in a genre whose "unscripted" content producers continue to find new ways to lower the bars of taste and intellect, The Real Housewives franchise ranks alongside such titles as Jersey Shore, Toddlers & Tiaras and anything involving the Kardashians in terms of its complete and utter lack of substance.

Nobody associated with any TV series whose title begins with The Real Housewives of ... has anything to brag about, except perhaps to their accountants, contractors and luxury-car dealers.

That includes the Canadian-passport-carrying folks now ever-so-boastfully trumpeting the arrival of our very own Real Housewives. Seriously, I'd understand if they were as gleeful as heck at the prospect of making some just-plain-dumb easy money; I'd even respect a laughing-out-loud declaration that they can't believe they're actually getting away with something as audacious as this flimsy importation exercise.

But saying they're proud of what they're putting on the screen -- sorry, that's where they lose me.

The northward migration of The Real Housewives isn't, by any stretch, the first time Canadian producers have grabbed at the coattails of a popular U.S. reality-TV trend. From Canadian Idol to Who Wants To Be a Millionaire: Canadian Edition to Deal or No Deal Canada to the snowbound Laguna Beach/The Hills-inspired youth-hookup celebration Peak Season, Canuck TV has long been eager to make a bit of quick cash by slapping a Maple Leaf sticker over a popular reality-TV concept's "Made in the USA" label.

That's just the TV business, as it's conducted across the Canada-U.S. border. And if it succeeds financially, it's good business. But announcing the arrival of something as noxious as The Real Housewives of Vancouver as if it's something to be proud of, and that its "stars" are worth celebrating ... well, that's just cynical.

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 7, 2012 C3