THERE’S something about a train wreck – bad as it might be – that is irresistible to the eye.
Same with highway smash-ups – you simply cannot help rubbernecking even if you know it’s wrong to stare at someone else’s terrible misfortune.
That’s kind of how I feel about “The Anna Nicole Smith Show,” E!Entertainment Television’s new reality sitcom.
We don’t know much about what this show will be like when it premieres tonight at 10 on the cable channel. But from what little I’ve been able to pick up – in the promos E! has been running and in the interviews Anna Nicole gave last week on various TV channels and Howard Stern’s radio show – “The Anna Nicole Smith Show” is shaping up as a classic example of train-wreck TV – horrendous perhaps, but arresting just the same.
First there were the promos – 15- or 30-second slices of Anna Nicole’s life captured on videotape by E! camera crews who have been tracking her every move for weeks. In the promos, Anna Nicole is seen choosing fabric for some garish new decorating scheme or sharing bits of her personal philosophy.
The video seemed high-quality; her behavior eccentric – perfect for the first reality sitcom to come to TV since “The Osbournes.”
Moreover, I first saw the promos during E!’s own “True Hollywood Story” on Liza Minnelli, who is getting her own reality sitcom on VH1. The Liza show meshed so well with the Anna Nicole promo spots that the whole thing seemed to make perverse sense.
Then there were the interviews. I caught Anna Nicole on Fox News Channel one morning last week. And the way she was talking, you got the impression she had no idea what she was getting into when she agreed to have her private life filmed for a TV show.
According to her statements on that newscast and on Stern’s radio show, she now regrets having anything to do with the TV show and is bracing herself for the embarrassment of her life.
Embarrassing for her, but priceless for viewers. Anna Nicole says she became so accustomed to the presence of the TV crews that she forgot to mind her manners not long after filming began.
Now she’s worried about what the cameras picked up and what the producers have chosen to include on the finished product. And that’s as tantalizing a bit of p.r. hype as I’ve ever heard going into the launch of a new TV show.
I’m willing to declare sight unseen that “The Anna Nicole Smith Show” figures to be the most surprising show on the air this week. Or, it could be a total dud – which would explain why E! had no preview tapes available for critics.
Either way, I have nothing better to do on a Sunday night at 10. Do you?
