A fresh take on the Selfie age

John Cho and Karen Hillan in Selfie.

Ah, Christmas. A time for giving. For thinking of others. For thinking others will love your gift of selfies, showing off your latest haul from Santa.

If only Selfie, TVNZ On Demand's new sitcom, weren't so true to life. Unfortunately for humanity, this could be the most culturally accurate show of the year. It's about an insecure, self-obsessed 20-something with few real friends or social graces, thousands of Instagram followers and an embarrassing fondness for posting images of herself. It pokes fun at - and virtually spits on - the attention-seeking behaviour that runs rampant on social media. You get the impression that many selfies were hurt in the making of this. But anyone with a Facebook account will agree, it's high time they were skewered in a TV show.

Plenty of viewers will recognise themselves in - or distance themselves from - Eliza Dooley (Karen Gillan), a girl "addicted to the instant gratification of unearned adulation from a group of strangers you insist on referring to as your friends". Just in case you didn't catch the Eliza reference, this description comes from Henry (John Cho) the show's voice of reason, and the one helping Eliza transition from gauche narcissist to mildly pleasant human.

Yep, it's a contemporary version of My Fair Lady, the larger-than-life, glossy version. But deep down, it's dark and bitchy, drawing a line between regular selfie posters and their self-esteem issues. Eliza was titled "Most Butt" (butt ugly) in her high school year book. She'd escape the pain by reaching for the nearest distraction - her phone.

Years later, having styled herself as a beauty-obsessed internet star, she humiliates herself, and finally gets the hint that those outside her digital bubble find her cringe-worthy. All of this unfolded in the pilot, which lurched around with an odd rhythm, yet hit on something we all know to be true.

Not so true perhaps was that Henry agreed to help Eliza without any mention of financial payoff. A branding expert missing an opportunity to secure free advertising? Weird.

But Henry represents the grumpy old man (me) shouting at Facebook, Instagram and Twitter - the ungrateful recipient of all those hashtag-heavy pics of holiday legs, makeovers and bored posers.

"Social media is this giant fingernail scratching this woman's itch for constant attention," says Henry. "Look at me, something good happened! Hashtag blessed. Oh look at me, something bad happened. Hashtag still blessed..."

Selfie comes from Suburgatory creator Emily Kapnek, and shares its droll perspective on vapid modern life. It's topical, familiar, but so far, a little too angry to love. Although star Karen Gillan nails the Paris Hilton walk, she's not particularly warm. Rather than injecting the role with ditzy likeability, a la Alicia Silverstone in Clueless or Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde, Eliza is, so far, a cartoonishly superficial fame-whore. But things could improve. Supposedly it's a romantic comedy, so the Eliza-Henry dynamic could be heading in a softer direction. And it does have some great, zeitgeisty lines. All of Eliza's friends are apparently "drunk or at Soul Cycle". She's most confused by "plus-sized skinny jeans".

No doubt there's more fun to be had watching Eliza learn to be nice to others, and live in the present, without constantly checking her iPhone. "I'm not used to paying attention to super boring, long stuff, okay?" she says to Henry, after he takes her to a wedding. Touche.

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