Sunday, 29 April 2012

MTV's The Valleys: a review.


When I was an innocent child, I was plucked from the normality of south London, and brought into the land known as the south Wales valleys. Twelve years later, I’m still adapting, but whenever someone asks, I’m proud to say that being a valleys girl is lush. Phenomenal, in fact (hint, that last bit should be said in the strongest valleys accent that you can muster).

So it is with great disgust that I find MTV are out to humiliate yet again. I can near guarantee that Essex has not benefitted from ITV’s The Only Way is Essex, nor has Newcastle’s reputation been vastly improved by Geordie Shore.  All that MTV is achieving with this travesty of faux-reality television is embarrassing the places where these people live, and turning the characters into parodies of real human beings.  

It isn’t even as if I’m a reality television snob – Jeremy Kyle is incredibly ego-boosting, and don’t even get me started on how much I love BBC3’s Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents and Don’t Tell the Bride – I just don’t want to see another group of people becoming fodder for trash magazines. When looking at the Twitter feed for the show (@MTVTheValleys), the majority of it seems to be plastic looking girls excitedly blathering on about how they’ve submitted their applications. What happened to real ambition that doesn’t involve five minutes of fame or becoming a WAG?  It’s perhaps the fake Twitter account that gets it right when it comes to what the reactions will be, asking for ‘wannabe glamour models with bad hair extensions’ to get in touch.  

Do you know what? If you want to know what the valleys are like, watch Gavin and Stacey. Everyone here’s got an Uncle Bryn and a Doris living next door. But even if you haven’t, ask me nicely and I’ll do my Nessa impersonation for you; that’ll be far more entertaining than any embarrassing programme MTV could ever come up with. 

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