There’s been a sneakily high-profile push behind ITV2’s latest offering, The Only Way Is Essex (ITV2, Sunday, 10 October, 10pm). A lot of effort has gone into making a show that, the broadcaster hopes, will become a trashy hit in the vein of The Hills or Simple Life. All that effort, it has to be said, didn’t result in a show with a title that made any sense at all.
What does The Only Way Is Essex even mean? Essex doesn’t even closely rhyme with the word ‘up’. ‘Epping Fail’ fail would have been funnier and tapped into people’s penchant for irritating internet parlance.
Anyway, ITV have brought us what they hope to be a more base-level version of Channel 4’s Seven Days, focusing on spray-tans, nightclubs and people crying into bottles of fizzy booze. And the in the first episode, it took about 3 seconds for the whole thing to unravel into farce.
It was clear from the off that this show had an agenda. It’s probably expected of us that we should tear into the show and berate every single person on-screen for being shallow, dead-eyed and gawp-mouthed. The viewer was told what to think of the show before the theme tune had kicked in, as the series is sponsored by a Cold Sore cream.
Subconsciously, you told ‘Ah! This is the most apt sponsorship of a TV show since a Fort Boyard was sponsored by webcam developers!’
This morning, those that watched the show will coo about the girl who showed off a tattoo that said a bloke’s name on her mons pubis, or indeed, there will be a lot of cackling about the very notion of ‘vajazzle’, which is a process which sees someone from a beauty salon gluing jewels to someone’s fanny.
And of course, it’s hard not to sick in your mouth when you see someone cockily stating that “to look good costs money” while they wear a suit jacket with leather arms and vague bondage zips.
However, if you’re watching this like it’s a reality show, then you’re off the mark. There was nothing sincere about The Only Way Is Essex, thereby leaving a nasty taste in the mouth the morning after.
That’s because the whole thing preys on our notion that Essex is full of creosoted men and women who are have a timeshare on the same lumpen brain cell, all with ridiculous hair extensions and horrific, gleaming teeth… but instead of getting the feeling of peering into a hideous world that clearly exists out there somewhere in the world, it feels like the whole thing is too set-up and the people involved are players in the world’s most expensive amateur dramatics performance.
Short-sighted viewers will no doubt feel that this show justifies their views on the people of Essex, wishing it would be cut off from England and allowed to drift away to sea, when really, the people involved are about as relevant to Essex as someone in a flatcap is relevant to Lancashire. It feels a bit lazy and 20 years too late to start peering into a world that’s invariably morphed into something else already.
And this is the problem.
The show itself has clearly been designed to be a car-crash event and, weirdly, on that front, it’s actually quite disappointing. The whole thing is so stilted and staged that it loses that crucial spontaneity which makes car-crash telly so grimly rewarding in the first place.
ITV have clearly gone out with the intention of making a show that is a ‘guilty pleasure’. They really shouldn’t have bothered.
ITV make hundreds of car-crash shows when they’re trying to make something they deem to be good. Unknowingly, ITV makes some of the best horrorgrammes around and then, when they finally realise and decide to act on it, they lose a vital element which leaves us all with something that barely registers.
Basically, if ITV had approached The Only Way Is Essex like they normally approach a show, we could have had something wonderfully horrible.
The result isn’t a look into the social circles of Essex, but rather, the opportunity to for us all to see exactly what the twerps of media think about the people of Britain, which is not unlike the Henry Higgins character in My Fair Lady. If you sneered at the “Lisson Grove lingo”, then you’re party to nasty bet and, being brutally honest, that’s a far more ugly place to be than the where the inhabitants of this show reside.
A horrible, horrible programme… but alas, not for the reasons anticipated. This show is too cynical to function properly.
Jon H says
Cynicism in reality TV, you say? Surely it’s more honest about its staginess than the nonsense on X Factor? (I thought you were the Pizza delivery man). They open by saying it is fake. And the participants are willing and fully aware of what they’re doing. They’re not being exploited.
It’s not supposed to representative of Essex. It’s not supposed to form opinions about anything. It’s supposed to be a rip off of The Hills and blur the line between reality and soap, both of which formats are light entertainment.
Agree about the title though. It’s shit.
Swineshead says
Crap title maybe, but I thought it was pretty affectionate and knowing. And, bizarrely, pretty watchable. Each to their own, as is traditional.
les says
he bought that
les says
are they for real theres girls well how could anyone live with empty head people
carl says
wat a load of shit it certainly justifies that the essex men r posing thick twats and the girls r so fucking dumb
Nikki says
Well you aren’t much better with your spelling are you? If you know so much about Essex as you claim to, you will know that 95% of the people there aren’t like that. If you think that you’ve never been to Essex. Where are you from?
JACK says
Yep I agree with Carl. A dreadfully flat county full of fake tanned airheads and posing, shallow “mugs” (as you lot down there might call them)… This awful programme just displays the truth
I have been to Essex before all you “Geezers and Gals” jump on the band wagon…
and Yes, it ‘s a total shithole.
Thank god I am Northern….. End of chat
sandsie says
stop using big words,trying to give it some artistic angle(and make yourself sound cool)the only word in your comment that was acurate was the very last one SHIT
dannii says
Essex is actually the bollocks!!
Best county ever :-)
I am from essex where this programme is being filmed and i agree it is a load of shit! and i can clarify that them girls are fake and it actually nothing like that and yes the programme is wank with the worst acting iv EVER seen
x
Jonathan Kubiak says
I live and work in Buckhurst Hill (where some of this is filmed) and went to Chigwell school.
Unfortunatly, some (though not all) of the Essex population is very accurately presented in this show. I should know, two of the cast are my customers!
Denise says
What a complete load of crap! I am from essex and watching this junk makes me ashamed to admit it!
Jamie says
the worst program i have ever seen in my life it makes people from essex look stupid when there the idiots they should get there heads out of the arse, a load of shit
Kermit says
What big words? And where is he trying to give it an artistic angle?
Sarah says
The people featured in this show are NOT representative of the general polulation of Essex. The majority of the people in this county are the same as anyone else in any other county in England.
In my travels around Britain I have seen plenty of people who are like those in The Only Way Is Essex: this ‘type’ is not confined to just one county!
Yes, the landscape is flat, but once you are out of the South East of the county, it is actually very beautiful (think Constable country…) . We have a very rich history, some excellent schools, pretty villages…
…Jack, I’m assuming you only visited the South East of the county and have based your judgement on that – I suggest another visit and perhaps venture to the North of the county: equally, I have visited ‘the North’ often – there are some places there which are just as bad, if not worse, than certain areas of Essex (including the ‘type’ of person!), but I do not judge a whole county or area of England based on that – I manage to see beyond those areas and appreciate the beauty of surrounding countryside, history and culture.
By the way, I am blonde, but this is my natural colour; I have never owned or worn white stilletoes; I’ve never had a fake tan (and i burn in the sun, so don’t have a ‘natural’ tan either); I’m educated, well spoken, and run my own business; I’ve never even heard of a ‘vajazzle’ until now; I dislike tatoos; I like the natural look….and the majority of my friends are the same.
Please just open your eyes and look at the wider picture before tarring an entire county with the same brush!
Denis Speirs says
I ‘stumbled’ on this show (?) LOL ! by accident when looking for a news prog. WHAT A LOAD OF UTTER TRIPE ! Theyve gotta be ‘havvn a larf aint they !’ My God entertainment??? They could put all their collective brain cells into an empty breezer bottle!! Get it off TV utter utter s***e
joan sheen says
i lived in essex when i was 18 till 23 great people but returned when i was 50 to clacton hated it kids think there del boy girls bad manners sly women i worked with false as santa but do have a lot of essex mates scousers are real what u see is what u get we dont backstab we laugh a lot not bitch a lot
Shay says
UKs version of Jersey Shore…….try hards!
stuart says
people who have lost their jobs dnt want to see this crap show!
John says
this is bigest shit I have ever seen in my life-TOTAL CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
John says
sober do not understand, even drunk, do not see something abnormal and scary and it should be called “Vanity”
Totally Reem says
Rob & I think this t.v show ‘Only way is essex’ is the Reemest program ever!!! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
sophie meckeburgh says
words cannot describe just how shit this programme is!