Poking fun at reality TV? Trust me, it’s far too easy.
In the 15 years since the reality format began to dominate the schedules of Bravo, TLC, Discover, History, A&E and bigger networks, they’ve offered just as many opportunities for spoofs of housewives, dance moms, top models and bigfoot hunters. “Saturday Night Live” and countless other sketch shows have taken whacks at reality shows and entire series were devoted to reality sendups (such as Hulu’s “Hotwives”), built around an obvious, overriding comment: The genre demeans both participants and producers, but most of all it demeans the viewer.
Needless to say, the joke gets old pretty fast. You would be better off watching an actual reality show and supplying your own snark. Lately, though, two new shows — one going for strict LOLs, the other going for a remarkable depth of existential despair — are cutting reality TV with newly sharpened blades.
The wickedly addictive “UnREAL,” which premiered on Lifetime earlier this month with far more heft and purpose than its premise might seem to contain, is a show within a show: It chronicles the deliberately hurtful process that goes into making a season of “Everlasting,” a successful “Bachelor”-esque network reality show.
Created by Marti Noxon (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) and Sarah Gertrude Shapiro (and drawing on Shapiro’s experiences working on reality shows), “UnREAL” is essentially a dramedy; parts of it are humorous, but most of it tends toward a sharp mixture of soap opera and soul-sucking depravity.
As “UnREAL” makes pointedly clear, no one gets out of this process with a shred of dignity intact, whether they are on camera or behind the scenes. The show’s strength lies in its ability to make you care about a group of people who are all, in one way or another, unlikable and who labor on a product that is, at best, trashy and, at worst, morally reprehensible.
That’s the reality of what “UnREAL” is trying to portray: the exploitation of our human tendencies to drag one another down. “UnREAL” deliberately steers just clear of a scathing indictment (after all, Lifetime and its parent network, A&E, profit plenty from reality shows), but any sentient viewer should at some point feel a little culpable in this process.
“Another Period,” which premiered Tuesday on Comedy Central, is completely different in tone and approach, but its sick humor nevertheless echoes some of what “UnREAL” is saying.
Created by, written by and starring Natasha Leggero and Riki Lindhome, this half-hour series is an unexpected mashup of a reality show and a PBS “crunchy gravel” period drama — “Downton Abbey” reimagined as an Andy Cohen fever dream. Leggero and Lindhome play Lillian and Beatrice Bellacourt, horribly spoiled sisters living in fin-de-siècle splendor in a Newport, Rhode Island, mansion that is filled with servants and comically Victorian details.
The “Upstairs Downstairs” riffs are matched by the familiar tropes of reality shows, including all those moments where the characters privately talk trash directly to the camera.
Class warfare is the primary target, with as many jokes about pubic hair, Helen Keller, women’s suffrage, incest and closeted homosexuality as it takes to get there.
As with “UnREAL,” “Another Period” demonstrates that female creators and writers are perhaps the surest shots when the aim is take down the reality TV that is made for and marketed to their demographic. Sharply conceived satire can sometimes accomplish what outrage and disgust cannot, sending some of this junk back in the direction from whence it flows.
Watch
“Another Period”: 10:30 p.m. Tuesdays on Comedy Central.
“UnREAL”: 10 p.m. Mondays on Lifetime.
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