A new Australian TV reality show based on the American Jersey Shore is already facing a backlash from locals, before filming has even begun.
Residents and officials of The Shire in southern Sydney are worried the show will make a mockery of the area.
So why are locals outraged by the latest reality TV show offering?
Because the show, they believe, will depict them as a tribe of dumb, white wannabes, with no concerns apart from fake tans, sex and fights.
We know this because the project is based on the US reality show Jersey Shore, and its UK spin-off Geordie Shore.
Now the residents of the Shire and its Mayor are joining forces to fight what they call an obscene distortion of the truth.
“This is smut, this is not good TV,” Sutherland Shire Mayor Carol Provan said.
“I thought, this seems very strange, and we didn’t pick up on it until we saw that leaked video, and that’s when we all started to get very nervous about this.”
Mayor Provan saw a brief promotional video of tryout participants in the new Channel Ten show The Shire. The clip shopped the show to advertisers as a ‘dramality’ and a ‘behind-the-curtain look into the heart of Australia’.
Contestants did have dreams - some wanted to be porn stars, while another hoped to one day own a nightclub.
“This is a beautiful place to live, and the residents of the Shire have already started emailing me and their MPs, and saying please stop this,” Mayor Provan said.
The production company Shine Australia were granted filming rights after promising the Shire would showcase a family-friendly, wholesome, growing community as the ideal place to live.
“This Shine has actually come to the Shire and really given us a false impression of what they’re going to do, and if they’re coming through with a story like this, about porn stars and false boobs, it’s crazy - were a family Shire,” Mayor Provan said.
Some locals said they knew people in the program, and described it as being like Jersey Shore.
“A girl from our school is in it, and she's just being really extreme about it,” said one local man.
For years the Shire enjoyed its reputation as the place where Aussies lived, or wanted to. Then the 2005 Cronulla Riots happened, and its image was severely tarnished.
Jersey shore hit pay TV screens in America four years later in 2009. It features the inane non goings-on in the lives of Jersey locals, including now household names like Mike ‘The Situation’ Sorrentini and Nicole ‘Snooki’.
Ironically the Shire was the setting for Australia's first-ever reality TV show - Sylvania Waters. But that was positively tame compared to what's in store for the ‘Jersey Shire’.
Network Ten plan to shoot The Shire from the end of the month. The producers of this Australian version made a similar show in England named The Only Way is Essex – another Jersey Shore rip-off.
Around Cronulla they’re worried that this new foray into the facile may drag television to a new low and take the Shire with it.
“It’s outrageous. I can’t believe Channel Ten would do this. I mean they’re a well-known channel, all of you are great people, why would you put something out there like that,” Mayor Provan said.
Sutherland Shire Council is seeking legal advice and vowing to stop filming before it’s due to start next week.
