Ordinary Gweilo

Never mind that Hong Kong is apparently awash with copies of everything from watches to soy sauce, American TV is soon to be awash with copies of ‘The Apprentice’. As well as the direct copies (one will feature that bearded bloke who runs Virgin, another that bearded bloke who used to own Spurs), there appear to be at least two about lawyers. No surprise that Fox are doing one, but David E Kelley is also getting in on the act, having overcome his earlier aversion to this genre. According to The Guardian (registration required):

The move is something of a u-turn for Mr Kelley, who last summer launched an outspoken attack on network executives for commissioning more and more reality shows, which he described as "junk" and "trash". Mr Kelley said his change of heart was down to the strength of the idea for the legal reality show, which came from independent producer Renegade 83, the company behind the US version of Blind Date. "I’m not a big fan of reality television and I’m still not a big fan of those productions that pander to the lowest common denominator. [But] the folks at Renegade wanted to meet and discuss the series and I loved the idea," Mr Kelley told American entertainment magazine Variety

OK, so it’s all about quality, and certainly not the money. Who better to bring us a law-based reality series than the creator of Ally McBeal and The Practice, two shows that were very true-to-life.

Star World has just started showing series 7 of The Practice which, in the way of Mr Kelley’s shows, seemed to fall apart after the first few series, becaming increasingly over-wrought and melodramatic and rapidly losing its already somewhat tenuous grip on reality. It was widely expected to be cancelled after series 7, but instead Kelley fired most of the stars and carried on making it with a lower budget before it finally was cancelled at the end of series 8. However, one or two of the new characters introduced in series 8 are going to appear in a new spin-off, so the world will not be without a David E Kelley law drama.

Meanwhile, on ‘The Apprentice’, they fired the fat bloke for being not very good at selling t-shirts in Planet Hollywood. It was all rather puzzling – the women’s team decided that the best strategy was to sell as much booze as possible, whilst the men (as usual) did a lot of boringly sensible things that kinda worked in a limited way. The problem with aggressively hawking booze to your customers is that it whilst the margins are good, it can be very unprofitable if just one person drives home drunk, kills someone, and then you get sued.

Hence the fact that Planet Hollywood doesn’t follow this strategy, and the real-life managers were not happy. However, the rules of the show are very simple, and so the men lost for the fourth straight week, and Howie or Bowie, or whatever his name was, got fired. Next week the teams are changed around, so the men will not suffer the twin disadvantages of being four against eight and having to compete against the women’s use of sex appeal in every task. Now, about this new reality show with lawyers. Somehow I can’t get this old joke out of my mind: "What do you call one hundred lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?" "A promising start" Well, how about one a week? A very modest proposal, I think you’ll agree.