Entertainment

So-called ‘Life’

IF history is any indication, dramas about the fast-paced glamour world of New York models have been about as big a hit as short, fat girls are on the runway.

And the Ashton Kutcher-produced “The Beautiful Life: TBL,” premiering tonight on The CW, keeps the proud tradition alive with dialogue so bad, it’ll make you laugh out loud; acting so shallow, it could make a model look brainy; and actors so unbelievable, they can’t even get the runway stomp right.

In fact, in the show’s opening sequence, which is supposed to take place right now during New York Fashion Week, the “models” on the catwalk move more like housewives working a mall charity event in Indianapolis.

In other words, only 12-year-olds could believe this show — which is probably their target audience anyway.

The show’s two big principals — newly-crowned “It” model Raina (played by Sara Paxton) and just-discovered Chris (Benjamin Hollingsworth) — are purer than the first snow on an Iowa cornfield, which is exactly where Chris comes from.

We know this because, in an early scene, while having lunch in Manhattan during Fashion Week with his parents (they didn’t know), Dad says: “I’m going to be paying off this family vacation for the next three harvests!” (I swear I’m not making that up.)

Well, wouldn’t you know it, but Chris gets discovered in that coffee shop by gay model agent Simon (Dusan Dukic) for the, yes, Covet Modeling Agency. But, when Simon tries to act like Chris is his new guy, the farm boy demonstrates he’s no boy toy by punching him out. (Like I said, it’s for 12-year-olds.)

The rough stuff ruffles the agency’s glamorous owner, former supermodel Claudia Foster (played by former supermodel Elle Macpherson).

Meantime, high drama is taking place elsewhere. Supermodel Sonja (Mischa Barton) returns to walk the runway after what we assume has been a stint in rehab (!) only to find she’s no longer the biggest model in the world.

No one here remotely looks like a high fashion model — just like “Gossip Girl” actors who aren’t young enough to actually pass for prep-school students.

Even the gorgeous, hard-partying Barton looks banged up — not like she just got out of a facility, but like she still needs one. But, hey, as someone in the show says, “You can’t escape your past!” How droll! How clever!

I suppose worse shows than “The Beautiful Life” have survived opening episodes like this (think “‘Til Death“). So, I’m not sounding a death knell so much as a warning bell.