TV critic Emma Bullimore says Towie paved the way in the “constructed reality” genre on British television, building on the success of The Hills, a reality show set in Los Angeles that aired its final episode earlier in 2010.<\/p>\n
“It was a confusing concept,” she says.<\/p>\n
“These were real people, living real lives and conducting genuine relationships, but the directors of the show would give ideas for ‘scenes’, or steer the contributors in particular directions to create drama.”<\/p>\n
Bullimore recalls going to the press launch for the first series at a cocktail bar with loud music, a far cry from most premieres held in a theatre or screening room.<\/p>\n
“There was a real buzz and a feeling that this show would change the TV landscape, which indeed it did.”<\/p>\n
She puts its success down to the show’s portrayal of Essex stereotypes – full of glitzy outfits, fake tans and big hair – a method which “inspired countless copycat versions set in different parts of the UK” like Made in Chelsea and Geordie Shore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TV critic Emma Bullimore says Towie paved the way in the “constructed reality” genre on British television, building…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-74822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}