News alert! Russian is the new Italian. And Brooklyn is the new New Jersey.
The next ethnic group ripe to be exposed on TV for its shamelessness, tackiness, cluelessness, bad manners and worst taste: Russian-Americans. Thank God!
Yes, TV execs, like strip miners who go in and exhaust all natural resources in a rural area before moving on to the next have, it seems, exhausted the once-rich New Jersey Italian-American cafone and are ready to dig for Russian gold.
Welcome the “Russian Dolls,” Lifetime’s upcoming reality show featuring tawdry, money-grubbing Russians living and spending big in Brighton Beach.
Billed as the “Jersey Shore” of Brighton Beach, the show’s really more like a version of “Real Housewives” because there are older people who are featured as prominently as the tanned 20-year-olds.
Chosen for their lack of depth and good looks are:
* Eddie, 26, whose ambition is to be famous.
* His pal Albert, also 26, who aspires merely to be rich.
* Twenty-something babes Anna, an aspiring model; Anastasia, who is too busy getting tan to finish college; and Diana, who hopes to become the princess-wife to a rich Russian guy.
There are also three women in their 30s and 40s — including Marina, who, along with her husband, owns one of the most famous clubs in Brighton Beach, Rasputin.
My favorite person in the whole deal? Marina’s 56-year-
old mother-in-law, Eva, who in the first episode enters a Russian grandmother beauty pageant.
She does a fantastic belly dance and brings the grandpas to their knees — much to the humiliation of her daughter-in-law, who thinks it’s all tacky.
It’s like borscht calling the blini sour.