Now, retro-reality: Reviving 60s sitcoms

Now, retro-reality:
Reviving 60s sitcoms

'Beverly Hillbillies' and 'Green Acres' with real folk

By Jim Jazwiecki

   Like the flu, reality TV returns each season in a slightly mutated form.
    First it was the game shows: "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," "Greed," "The Weakest Link."
    Then came more contrived competitions like "Survivor," "Big Brother" and "Fear Factor."
   Next it was shows whose appeal was pure celebrity voyeurism—"The Osbournes" and "The Anna Nicole Show."
    Now get ready for something new. Or, rather, something not very new at all. You could call it retro-reality.
    Both Fox and CBS are working on updating beloved 1960s fish-out-of-water sitcoms as reality series, at least one of which will star so-called regular people.
   CBS is planning a retread of "The Beverly Hillbillies" that will pluck a family of five, granny included, from a downscale rural locale and ensconce them in of the nation's most exclusive zip codes.
    Fox is developing a similar retooling of "Green Acres" which one of the show's producers describes as "a limousine with a U-Haul attached."
   "Real World" and "Road Rules" creator Bunim-Murray Productions is behind the mid-season offering, which will take a wealthy urban family, slap pitchforks in their hands and deposit them in the middle of a yet-undisclosed nowhere.
     Fox officials have said they will consider casting at least one celebrity in the "Green Acres" update, a scenario that suggests a countrified "Osbournes."
    CBS, meanwhile, has dispatched producers to comb the back woods for potential contestants, in addition to setting up a hotline for those hillbillies lucky enough to have phones.
      CBS executives say they will take care not to portray the stars of "The Real Beverly Hillbillies," as the show will be called, as yokels to be mocked and humiliated.
    "The intent is to be respective but at the same time enjoy the humor that comes from the fish-out-of-water scenario of the show," Ghen Maynard, the network’s vice president of alternative programming, told Variety. "We want a family who has a sense of humor about themselves."
    Robert Thompson, a professor of media studies at Syracuse University, says the "Beverly Hillbillies" setup needn’t be inherently degrading to its participants.
   "There is the possibility of exploitation," acknowledges Thompson. "But it's patronization, I think, to call this exploitation. Why is it okay for Darva Conger to appear on national television and marry a millionaire for our entertainment, but somehow not for these people to live in Beverly Hills?"
    To Brad Adgate, senior vice president and corporate research director at Horizon Media, both "The Real Beverly Hillbillies" and Fox’s "Green Acres" series represent attempts to "get above demographics."
    CBS sees reality shows as a way of bringing in the young viewers it lacks, while young-skewing Fox is counting on nostalgia to enlarge its audience with older viewers.
    Certainly both "Beverly Hillbillies" and "Green Acres" demonstrated the ability to attract audiences in their original incarnations.
    "Beverly Hillbillies," which aired from 1962 to 1971, rose to No. 1 in the ratings within three weeks of its debut and stayed there for two years. The episodes that aired in the weeks following President Kennedy’s assassination are among the most watched half-hours of TV ever.
    Following the success of "Hillbillies," CBS commissioned creator Paul Henning to create two more series: "Petticoat Junction" and "Green Acres."
     Both were hits, but CBS dropped them in 1971 in an attempt to shed its image as a rural network.

-Jim Jazwiecki is a writer in New York.

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