The Shire Premiere Recap - Is It The Show We Are Going To Love To Hate?

17 July 2012

So the first episode of Channel 10's The Shire is done and dusted, and boy did it make an impression!

The premise is strikingly similar to Laguna Beach, with the helpful voice over telling us: "For one unforgettable summer we're going to show you the real lives of the real people of The Shire. No actors, no scripts, just the drama of our lives."

"No matter what happens, we're going to bare all. The love, The hurt, The heartbreak. Our story starts here, in the Shire."

We were pretty surprised that Paul Kelly leant his song Dumb Things to be the title track, and the surprises didn't stop there!

The show opened with surfer boy Mitch talking about his life in Cronulla. The assertion that no script is involved is a bit questionable, with a few awkward moments peppered throughout first few shots.

"Man, the surf is pumping, there are good looking girls everywhere," surfie Simon exclaims, as Australia collectively rolled their eyes.

GALLERY: Check out the biggest celebrity bikini blunders of all time!

Vernesa (yes that's really how it's spelt) and Sophie have got to be my favourite characters of the show so far. Their introduction to The Shire starts with Nesa's vacuous voice over insisting:

"We've got fake lips, botox, fake boobs, fake tans and so forth... but we're both real."

Yeah, they're totes natural. They spend the show getting fat zap, botox and talking about enhancing their trout pouts. Outstanding.



Cronulla Shire is where the 2005 race riots occurred, so it's pretty strange they chose to set a dramality show here.

Channel 10 producers have made a concerted effort to portray the area as being multi-cultural and tolerant though, even basing main characters around ethnic families, including the cringeworthy Skip-Hop rapper Rif-Raf! We're pretty sure we saw an Asian looking girl at one point too, so bravo Channel 10, bravo.

As Comedian Dave Hughes cleverly quipped on Twitter last night "It's hard to believe people from #TheShire were capable of organizing a riot!"

Our other favourite character came in the form of blonde Becca, a 20 year old who admits she "loves the high life."

Becca revealed last night that "My last trip was to Dubai, I pretty much went crazy over there... I bought shoes, I bought handbags, I bought jewellery."

And then she dropped "oh and I got a new nose!"

W.T.F.... Did we know these people existed in Australia before this? As The Herald Sun noted, this show makes Being Lara Bingle look like an installment of the political Q+A!

Becca has a creepy relationship with her creepy dad, and also had a 'nose fight' with her best friend during last night's episode. We have to say our jaws were on the floor at this stage.

We don't want to spoil all the surprises from last night, but hot dang if we weren't disappointed when the episode came to an end after 30mins.

We think this is going to be the new show we all love to hate, and hate that we love. For 30 mins of cringing, eye-rolling and general outrage, we can't wait to see what sordid underbelly of The Shire reveals to us next week!