Get ready for the latest US high school drama Gossip Girl to hit our screens
March 22nd, 2008, 10:02 pm Hobbies Ideas
Oh, my God! The rumours are true! The new American teen drama Gossip Girl is
brittle, bitchy and brilliant. Set among a clique of privileged Upper East
Side schoolkids, it%26rsquo;s better dressed than The OC, 10 times raunchier than
One Tree Hill and 1,000 times glossier than Skins. Gossip Girl is a
shameless fest of beautiful people and shallow emotion, mixed with drugs,
booze, sex, betrayal and clothes. Stuff Cranford. Gossip Girl is what I
watch TV for.
In America, the show has been a hit, not just with teens, but with the Sex and
the City demographic %26ndash; thirtysomething women like me, who shouldn%26rsquo;t really
be interested in the trials and tribulations of spoilt 16-year-olds. The
truth is, my friends and I are all addicted to American teen TV. We loved
Beverly Hills 90210, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson%26rsquo;s Creek, and
discuss the twists and turns of America%26rsquo;s Next Top Model at length. Gossip
Girl is the ultimate example of the teen genre. But I like it so much that I
wonder if its creator, Josh Schwartz, the man behind The OC (which I also
loved), devised it with the SATC demographic in mind %26ndash; a drama about kids
who have grown up too fast, aimed at grown-ups who still want to behave like
kids.
Set in an impossibly wealthy, sophisticated world, Gossip Girl is a utopia of
consumption, a televised fashion magazine full of the latest clothes,
social-climbing techniques, buzz words and new faces (a perfect antidote to
all that reality TV). On one level, it provides a hit of pure escapism, but
its premise also plays up the similarities between rich, spoilt teens with
no responsibilities and self-obsessed thirtysomethings, also with no
responsibilities. You watch it and think, those kids are like me, but with
better skin.
For a start, the cast all look as if they are in their late twenties. Then
they act like it, too %26ndash; how many 17-year-old boys do you know who hire
prostitutes to entertain their mates at a house party, as bad boy Chuck Bass
does? How many schoolgirls use party planners to stage-manage a sleepover,
as the spoilt Blair Waldorf does?
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