What is it with celebrities getting their own reality TV shows lately? Why do famous people get the bizarre compulsion to wheel themselves out with a "this is the real me" television series?

The latest celebrities to get a reality TV show are the dangerous, out-of-control, rock and roll hell-raising tennis-playing Williams sisters (Books) in Venus & Serena: For Real, which starts tonight on ABC Family.

If we’re not watching Ozzy Osbourne spent four hours trying to work
out how to do up a shirt, we’re watching Britney Spears say the word
"sex" 8000 times in the space of a minute, or listening to Bobby Brown
describing how he pulls lumps of cack out of Whitney Houston’s bumbum.

The reality TV genre thrives on watching out-of-touch celebrities
like the above trying – and failing – to act like normal people. But in Venus &
Serena: For Real, the subjects are basically normal people – normal
people that happen to be pretty good at tennis.

According to reports, the Williams sisters are consistently pushing
the message that they are hard-working, normal, positive, normal,
inspirational and – most of all – normal. They endlessly reminisce on
being poor children, how they shared a bed with almost everyone they
knew and how they thought showers were pieces of state-of-the-art
technology. They’re close-knit and just a tiny bit dull.

By the sounds of things, the main selling point of Venus &
Serena: For Real is that there’s a naughty dog in it. And that’s as
close as it comes to the grubby voyeuristic delights of the other
reality TV shows currently on air. But is that a good thing or a bad
thing?

Half an hour of watching a Jehovah’s Witness fret about if she trains hard enough? Or half an hour of watching the guy who sang Candy Girl saying that he once "had to dig a dootie bubble" out of Whitney Houston’s arse?

You can make your own minds up about that one.

[story by Stuart Heritage]