New show: 'Laguna Beach,' only set in Nashville
Posted: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 7:05 PM by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper
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TV
Call it "Real World: Nashville," "Nashville Star: Behind the Scenes," or "Laguna Beach: The Real Davidson County." It's a new reality show/soap opera that Fox has simply dubbed "Nashville," in which the creators of "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County" follow a bunch of country-music hopefuls, who also happen to be good-looking, telegenic, and camera-ready.
I'm perhaps the last TV viewer out there who remembers when "The Real World" was actually a good show, one in which young people from all over were filmed trying to further real careers in a city where it made perfect sense for them to live. Julie, Norman, Heather B., even Eric Nies, God love him, had real career reasons to be in Manhattan. Cameras followed them fairly unobtrusively, and they were too naive and real a bunch to play to the camera (also, their loft had no hot tub, something Bunim-Murray quickly remedied).
I could be wrong, but "Nashville" feels like it reaches back a little to that era. Of course, this is from the "Laguna Beach" people, so you have to wonder how much is real and how much is scripted -- are the producers secretly arranging for their would-be country stars to meet with producers and the like? And the subjects are pretty much all glamour gals and guys, which may be the norm on "American Idol," but isn't always the case with country stars.
Fox at least admits that the show isn't 100% real. They're calling it a "docu-soap," and it was developed through their drama department. When asked about the scripted allegations, creator Gary Auerbach said "we don't shoot 24/7. We don't follow, like normal reality shows do. That's why we call ourselves docu-soaps." He claimed that the show has the cast members' schedules but doesn't follow them around obsessively, and also that Nashville is such a small town that the same people constantly running into each other is more happenstance than scripted.
GAEL'S GRADE: I have only seen snippets of "Nashville," but at first glance, it interested me more than "Laguna Beach" did, if only because the kids have goals, even if the show isn't as real as it could be. We'll see.
TIDBITS:
--Gary and Julie Auerbach, creators of this show and "Laguna Beach," also created "Rollergirls," the cult favorite A&E show about roller derby. The Auberbachs both agreed they were proud of that show, but were doubtful it could ever return. "(The Rollergirls) were a little alternative, I think, maybe, for the main market in a sense," said Gary Auerbach.
--Unlike the original "Real World" cast, these kids are hardly nobodies. One of the more gorgeous contenders is even from a famous family -- Rachel Bradshaw is NFL great Terry Bradshaw's daughter. Jamey Johnson has an album out. Other cast members have had various levels of success with music.
