Lifetime is fist-pumping its way to gonorrhea and Gomorrah after picking up 12 episodes of a new Jersey Shore-esque docu-series focusing on the vibrant Russian-American community living in the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn, the network has announced.
Whispers that a Jersey Shore-inspired series would be transplanted to Coney Island first surfaced last April. Brighton Beach — nicknamed Little Odessa — is home to one of the largest Russian communities outside Moscow. Although inspired by the smash success of MTV’s Shore, producers at the “Network for Women” have come up with at least three distinct differences to set Brighton Beach apart from its vodka-soaked predecessor. For starters, the show will be narrated from the prospective of women — catering to the 26-year-old network’s infamous femme-centric TV tag. The show will also be multigenerational and family-oriented, unlike Jersey Shore, which focuses on a group of bar-hoppin’ twentysomethings sharing a beach house in the oceanfront community of Seaside Heights.
“It’s a multigenerational story told in the Lifetime voice of women living, dating and working in Brighton Beach,” says Gena McCarthy, Lifetime’s Senior Vice-President for Non-Fiction Programming. “You’ll see women in their 20s, 30s and 40s and even grandmothers … women and men as they date and struggle to assimilate.”
Filming is already underway and McCarthy promises that “there will be plenty of vodka, techno music and guys wearing Adidas pants, leather jackets and gold chains and driving souped-up cars.”
We can hardly contain ourselves…
Brighton Beach is just the latest in a long succession of attempts to capitalize on the success of Shore. In the 11 months since the show’s Nov. 2009 series premiere on MTV at least four similar shows have entered preproduction — such as Koreatown, produced by R&B crooner/actor Tyrese Gibson, and a “redneck-led” Party Down South, which is expected to air on Comedy Central early next year.
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