Nobody wants ‘nice’ reality TV stars

Made in Bondi’s obsession with presenting its young, hot, and affluent stars as likeable makes this tepid Eastern Suburbs riff on Made in Chelsea an utter failure.

The cast of Made in Bondi. Photograph: Seven Network

Made in Bondi
Channel 7, Tuesday at 9.05pm and streaming on 7plus

In a recent interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, Made in Bondi casting director Alex Ristevski proclaimed: “People are tired of the nastiness. We want to feel the warmth and the love.” To which I say: on what planet? We self-harming voyeurs who watch reality television about the young, hot and affluent do not do so in the hope that they will turn out to be amiable people. No! We want to watch a bunch of decadent toffs with lovely silky hair slap and snog each other. This obsession with “niceness” is what makes this tepid Sydney eastern suburbs riff on Made in Chelsea — one of Britain’s best and longest-running reality TV shows — an utter failure. It is obsessed with trying to convince us that if we ignore the squillion-dollar Vaucluse mansions, these people are just like us. To the young cast’s credit, they seem nice enough, if totally void of charisma. Made in Bondi’s drama takes the form of a love triangle: the so-called villain, model Lawson Mahoney — who speaks as if, moments before the cameras started rolling, he decided to give the Queen’s English a go — has moved back to Sydney after doing an Eat, Pray, Love gap year in Melbourne to recover from his break-up with content creator Bella Salerno. Lawson has a new bird, the easygoing jewellery designer Molly Paradise, whom he has met only once but already has “hard launched” on Instagram. They are set to reconnect at a party at the family home of 22-year-old jewellery entrepreneur (another one) Emma Pillemer — who seems to have been programmed with only one phrase (“Oh my gauurd, I love this outfit!”), yet invites compliments from tongue-wagging admirers like “Beauty and brains … what a woman”. We also meet a man who is introduced as “one of the best stylists in Sydney”, who is dressed in a salmon waistcoat with nothing underneath. I digress! Because this is a structured reality show, Bella (the ex) also has been invited to the party, and she has caught Lawson and Molly necking on … traditionally, this is where we’d get our first explosive row, but there’ll be no such thing. Instead, Bella sulks off quietly with her second-fiddle best mate for a private mardy. Much like the series, it’s deadeningly flat.

Australian Story
ABC, Monday at 8pm, and on ABC iview

Likeability didn’t serve Made in Bondi but it works a charm here. Anyone who has listened to Missy Higgins’s debut album The Sound of White knows that unvarnished, heartfelt storytelling is her raison d‘etre. This episode of Australian Story pulls back the curtain on one of Australia’s most enduring and treasured singer-songwriters. In this wide-ranging interview, Higgins, who first captured the nation’s attention with her 2001 Triple J Unearthed win, candidly reflects on the highs and lows of her life and career — from the enormous success of her potent debut record to the personal upheaval of a recent divorce. This is a portrait of an artist in flux, currently gearing up to release new music and embarking on a major retrospective tour. But this isn’t a recounting of past glories — Higgins is still evolving, still questioning and still very much in the game.

Sven
Prime Video

This past week, former England and Manchester City manager Sven-Goran Eriksson died, aged 76. The hard-living Swede had revealed in January that he was battling terminal cancer and had “at best” one year to live. Just days before his death, the feature-length documentary Sven was released on Amazon Prime Video. While the film follows the familiar sports documentary formula, charting Eriksson’s rise from a modest upbringing in rural Scandinavia to the heights of global football, it stands out because Eriksson was such an oddball. The documentary doesn’t shy away from the personal scandals that marred his career — his numerous affairs and the resulting British tabloid storm — but Eriksson remains unflinchingly candid. “Sex is one of many good things in life,” he says with ease. The film also features appearances from football superstars such as Wayne Rooney and David Beckham, who drop in to reflect on his legacy.

Kaos
Netflix

Who better to play a self-conscious, increasingly paranoid god than Jeff Goldblum? This zingy new comedy, from the writer of Netflix’s darkly funny hit The End of the F**ing World*, reimagines Greek gods as the 1 per cent. Rather than offering the sleek, stealthy vision of the elite seen in Succession, it opts for gaudy blue velour tracksuits from the trendy Japanese brand Needles. In a performance that recalls his role in David Cronenberg’s The Fly, Goldblum portrays a fast-and-loose modern Zeus who suspects a coup is under way. Who could blame him, given he has been shacked up with the rapacious Hera (Ozark’s Janet McTeer, excellent) for 1000 years? With its sharp script and a dangerously charismatic cast — including Billie Piper, Nabhaan Rizwan, and Eddie Izzard — Kaos is chaos, and whole lot of fun.

Only Murders in the Building
Disney+

TV’s great comfort watch, Only Murders in the Building returns for a fourth season. The New York City-set series follows an unlikely trio of friends — septuagenarians Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin), Oliver Putnam (Martin Short), and millennial Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) — who bond over their obsession with true crime and find themselves solving real-life murder while recording a podcast. The show continues to delight, with last season featuring a star-studded guest list that included Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep. This season adds a meta twist: the trio is summoned to Los Angeles by a Hollywood exec interested in making a movie based on their hit podcast. The cast has already been chosen, with Eugene Levy, Zach Galifianakis, and Eva Longoria playing fictional versions of themselves.