Is it real or is it really a fake reality show?
Tonight, NBC attempts something completely different with a scripted show, “Siberia” that imitates a reality show.
A group of “contestants” who are actually “B” actors and celebrities in real life, who use their real names in the fake reality show include, actors Joyce Giraud, Johnny Wactor, Esther Anderson, Miljan Milosevic, Irene Yee, Berglind Icey, Sam Dobbins, Sabrina Akhmedova, Natalie Scheetz, Neeko O.J. Skervin, Victoria Hill, Anne-Marie Mueschke, Daniel Sutton, George Dickson, Tommy Mountain, Harpreet Turka and LA radio personality Jonathon Buckley.
They are dropped into Siberia to play a survival reality show game with the winner earning $500,000. The area, formerly a Gulag, and before that in the early 1900’s, a settlement in which all of the fur trappers who lived there, mysteriously disappeared, never to be found again.
The group, which looks like a Fox News dream team, consists of gorgeous, curvy, big-coiffed women, middle aged men as well as young, hunkier know-it-alls and a few nerdy computer types.
The reality show archetypes are here—the bitchy model, the annoying guy who won’t pitch in, the older, tough-as-nails guys, the timid but smart ones, and yada yada.
Unlike real reality shows, these “contestants” (especially the women) who all knew they were being taken on a survival reality show show up in fantastic outfits—and like real reality show contestants—nobody knows how to make a fire.
This always makes me insane—fake or real. I mean, if you are going on a reality show—even if it’s a dating one or a scripted one with actors—wouldn’t you learn to make a fire just in case?
“Siberia” can be pretty annoying with the shaky single-camera and fake reality premise and all—but then it picks up in the last ten minutes when things go horribly wrong and the best character in the bunch gets killed off.
So the mystery becomes what killed the contestant? The killer sounds like a monster but moves like a man. Even though the producers are not on location, they tell the “host” to offer to let the contestants leave if they want to. But then again, maybe not.
It’s a new way to make TV—and I’m not sure it’ll work. But then again, stranger things have happened.
Like? Like shows about a good guy serial murderer, advertising in the 1960’s and maybe even a man-beast in Siberia who kills only good looking people.
Can’t wait until tonight? Check out the full pilot below.