“Jersey Shore” Hits The Shores Of Australia In “Hills-Esque” Docu-Soap “Freshwater Blue”

Jersey Shore’s going Down Under — with a twist of The Hills.

MTV is cashing in on the record-breaking success of Shore by creating international spinoffs. Surely, it’s only a matter of time before the trashy primetime soap heads to Beirut! In the meantime, MTV Australia is producing its first-ever original commission, Freshwater Blue. The latest fly-on-the-wall series from MTV, set on Sydney’s northern beaches, will debut on Australian television next month, and the program is already stirring controversy for its comparisons to Jersey Shore and MTV’s The Hills.

Freshwater Blue is described a raw look at a group of 12 friends during their last summer together before college. The teenagers drop F-bombs and drink like fish as they struggle with alcohol abuse, relationships, and sex. Sound familiar? In fact, the series promises to capture some of the best moments in the lives of protagonist Nicola Johnson, an aspiring dancer, and her boyfriend Luke Scott. One scene features a teen girl talking about getting so drunk at a party that she passed out in her own vomit and her dad had to find her on the lawn and put her in the shower.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Sydney blogs are already alive with criticisms of the show with the main view that it will add nothing to Australian values and life, except the degradation of intelligence and the reinforcement of pitiful stereotypes.

“It’s real, it would happen to any other teenage girl anyway. You are going to have really drunken moments and you’re going to learn from those experiences,” Johnson told AAP this week. “People are going to judge and have their opinion but it’s happened to them or going to happen to them anyways. It’s inevitable, it’s real life, sorry.”

Last month, Canada unveiled its own small screen embarrassment to the human race in the form of Lake Shore, a Jersey Shore-esque docu-soap set in an upscale section of Toronto.

Freshwater Blue premieres on Thursday, Dec. 2 @ 4.30 PM on MTV Australia.