How real is unREAL?

Shiri Appleby (L) and Constance Zimmer in unREAL

Way back before the dawn of time – okay, 1979 – Robin Williams released his first comedy album. It was called Reality- What a Concept. If you want to hear it you can still find it on YouTube; it’s great, if a little dated. However even the mercurial mind of Robin Williams would have been blown by modern notions of reality; to paraphrase Humpty Dumpty, when we use reality now it means whatever we choose it to mean.

I was thinking of this as I was watching the first episode of unREAL, the latest behind the scenes glossy TV drama from Lifetime. The main aim of unREAL is to lift the lid on reality television in the sense of allowing some daylight in on the magic of constructed reality. Although it appears oxymoronic, constructed reality is exactly what it says. It is a version of life constructed by real people who are in effect playing themselves; life without the boring bits as Hitchcock once said of drama. The best examples in this country are shows like The Only Way is Essex or Made in Chelsea in which cameras are always on hand to record the feuds and fights of everyday folk.

unREAL is based on a short film called Sequin Raze, written and directed by Sarah Gertrude Shapiro which was itself inspired by her four years as a producer on The Bachelor. In that reality show, an eligible male is expected to choose a bride from a pool of around two dozen eligible women. If you’ve seen the show you might share my view that it is a sign that we are approaching the end of days; these women generally debase themselves in order to catch the eye of the hunk du jour. The hunk has all the power. He can make or break the rules on a whim, in an especially demeaning sequence eliminated women get to come back and plead for another chance. Think of Gladiator but with lip gloss and more pouting.

The Bachelor is a perfect example of constructed reality. The narrative unfolds at the whim of the showrunner; the Caesar of this digital Coliseum who gets to decide who lives or dies. Caesar also chooses who gets to play which roles; who is the psycho villain, who is the needy ingénue, who is going to be the audience favourite, who is going to be the butt of the jokes. It’s an awesome responsibility because all the while even Caesar is vulnerable, this electronic emperor lives or dies at the whim of the audience figures.

In unREAL, created by Shapiro, the show in question is called Everlasting which is to all intents and purposes, The Bachelor in disguise. The hunk here is a hotel tycoon who needs the publicity and the women are there to win his wallet, if not his heart. Caesar is the androgynously named Quinn King (Constance Zimmer), a producer who runs her world from a control booth with a walkie talkie and a will of iron, dispensing favour and cruelty in equal measure as she attempts to construct a romantic narrative for the benefit of the baying audience. Also here is Rachel, Maximus to Quinn’s Caesar. Rachel (Shiri Appleby) was the best in the business at getting the all-important sound bites even at the cost of destroying the contestants’ lives, but she flipped out on set in the last series and ruined the show. Rachael really knows how it works; like Fitzgerald’s Monroe Stahr in The Last Tycoon she has the whole equation in her head. Quinn needs Rachael but can Rachael be trusted? When we see her first she’s wearing a ‘This is what a feminist looks like’ T-shirt, so I’m guessing someone is in for a surprise.

On the basis of the first hour there is the usual backstage intrigue; old romances, simmering rivalries, the air of quiet desperation and barely suppressed panic. But what is interesting for me is how much daylight is allowed to intrude on the lengths they go to in order to manipulate the story, producers posing as extras to direct scenes from within for example. Or the quite naked exposure of commercial interests; the male star will only go on if one of his hotels is used as a location with a prominent shot of the exterior. And there we were thinking all of those close-ups of restaurants, spas and boutiques in Real Housewives were just because they were really good stores.

But even more interesting I think is that the audience won’t care. Rather like Matthew Lillard’s deconstruction of the slasher movie in Scream, the audience is being told all the way through how it is being gulled by shows like these. It’s like a magician explaining how the trick is done while it’s being done. But it doesn’t matter because it’s reality.

And it’s a big hit. What a concept.