KEY POINTS:
The new TV2 series Gossip Girl is, "like", the latest in the rich Yank teenage brat genre.
It follows in the footsteps of such classics as Beverly Hills 90210, Dawson's Creek and The OC. Although when you read the publicity lichen for Gossip Girl it is at pains
to point out it is "based on the books of Cecily von Ziegesar" - wow, classy. So I suspect it fancies itself rather literary, and more closely aligned to the original rich Yank teenage brat masterpiece, The Catcher in the Rye than The Peach Pit. Or maybe an update of Generation X's manifesto Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis. But it's "so" not.
The story revolves around a group of bored, wealthy teenagers who attend a posh private school on Manhattan's upper east side. The main characters are a wild blonde, Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively), and her supposed "bestie", brunette Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), who are meant to be pals but in the first episode greet each other with all the warmth of gossip columnists Rachel Glucina and Bridget Saunders air-kissing at a Gilda Kirkpatrick soiree.
The Gossip Girl of the piece is an unidentified blogger (voiced by Veronica Mars' Kristen Bell) who posts dirt on the characters and their angst, intrigues and affairettes. The villains of the piece are their repugnant, screwed-up parents who run off with models called Roman, have seedy pasts and use their children to score business deals. "So my dad left my mom for another man, she lost 15lbs and got an eyelift. It's been good for her," says Blair, slugging back a martini and looking more like a post-menopausal matron with a hostess kitchen and suburban neurosis than an adolescent who should be studying calculus to get into Yale. Her boyfriend is just as old-before-his-time. "Blair's mom's at the country house. Maybe I should nick some of my dad's Viagra, or my mum's Paxil." But never mind, because there are lots of dirty, pretty things to look at.
Sometimes it seems Gossip Girl is merely a vehicle for Blake Lively's chin. The blonde star does have a spectacular jowl - like Ellen Barkin before she married and divorced that billionaire. Then again, The OC's Mischa Barton also had a shark-like jaw - and now she is on the C-list and has cankles.
I was excited about this series because I thought it was written by Amy Sherman-
Palladino, the wisecracking dialogue whiz behind The Gilmore Girls. Turns out she signed to do a film of Gossip Girl but decamped before the television series. Wisely.
I could not imagine her writing lines like: "Oh my God, my daughter's a woman!" or "You will never be more beautiful or thin or happy than you are now. Oh, and put some product in your hair - the ends are dry."
* Gossip Girl debuts on TV2 this Friday at 8.30pm.