Face the reality of this family ... if you can

By FIONA RAE

Paul Watson, the man responsible for bringing Sylvania Waters to an unsuspecting world, has adamantly refused to be held responsible for the reality explosion that followed.

Watson hates Big Brother and says modern docu-soaps do not enrich our understanding of our neighbours, or even ourselves.

And yet the spirit of Sylvania Waters lives on - not in Survivor or Temptation Island but in our own new local "reality" show, The Family (9pm, TV3).

Did the producers of the show, which features the wealthy Rippin family at work and play, know that Watson's earliest fly-on-the-wall was also called The Family?

That series, which screened in 1974, couldn't have been more different from this year's model. Described as a dirty-pans-and-all account, it featured a working class British family, the Wilkins.

Watson also made The Fishing Party, which featured British toffs on the polo field, on the river and in their palatial homes.

Then there was The Dinner Party, in which an outspoken bunch of Conservatives voiced their unpalatable opinions.

Most famously, there was Sylvania Waters, made in 1992, featuring the antics of Noeline Baker, Laurie Donaher and their blended family.

It caused a bit of a stink across the ditch, not only because of the rampant materialism - and quite a few other -isms of Noeline and Laurie - but because the Aussies thought the Brits had deliberately chosen a family that pandered to a British stereotype.

They thought they'd been set up - which is pretty much what Noeline and Laurie claimed afterwards, although no one believed them.

Sadly, we can't say that about The Family, however much we'd like to. It's all very well feeling superior about the Aussies, but like those embarrassing students on the Big OE, these are Kiwis getting drunk and behaving badly.

We met the Rippins last week, partying over New Year at Port Douglas, where patriarch Pat ("I am rude") had shouted them an expensive holiday.

The Dallas-style opening titles were a dead giveaway that what lay ahead were high-maintenance women, a champagne lifestyle and possibly a few fights. Thankfully, there are no shoulder pads. Not yet, anyway.

On the holiday were Peach, Pat's second wife, and her children, Victoria, Maria and Scott. Youngest son Matthew was, wise boy, somewhere else.

What followed had come with a warning, although nothing could have prepared us for the sight of Scott's backside during a massage or Pat gluing his teeth back in at the restaurant dinner table.

Maria, who is affectionately called Bosom by the family on account of her augmented frontage, managed to find herself a bloke on the way home from dinner, despite being almost incoherent earlier. Good old Kiwi ingenuity and stamina.

Meanwhile, Scott apparently scored himself a "sweet little pipi" as well, although we didn't see her, only the champagne bottle-strewn bed.

Ah, such are the lifestyles of the rich and newly famous.

No doubt the show will have all sorts of publicity spin-offs for the family, especially Scott's pursuit of the right sweet little pipi (a phrase that will be remembered long after the show has ended) to share his life with.

Forget Paul Watson's lofty ideals. This is classic car-crash television.