Shine's Matt Campbell

''It was difficult,'' says Shine's Matt Campbell, who has overseen production. It certainly was. Footage was leaked onto YouTube before Ten formally announced the show, prompting the mayor of the area in which it is set, Sutherland Shire, to declare war. ''I just don't think this show will support us, it will not help us, it'll just be very negative,'' Carol Provan told the Herald when the story broke.
What happened next is difficult to measure. Ten said the leaked YouTube clip unfairly characterised the show as sleazy. And it was right. Sources say the finished show bears little resemblance to the clip. Cast members have also been shed and new ones recruited. Who's exactly who is so confusing, the show's publicist could not send The Guide a press kit as this story was prepared. It is being ''amended'', she says, to include the new cast.
What we know is the series follows a group of telegenic young locals as they fall in and out of love on the golden sandy shores of Sydney's southern beaches. They include Gabrielle, 20, Tegan, 24, Andy, 22, Nikee, 20, Kerry, 26, and Mitch, 23.
But just how real is real? Ten is using the word ''dramality'' to present the show as a blend of drama and reality. In truth, the industry name for the genre is ''soft script'', so named because it generally involves putting real people into structured situations and ''soft scripting'' the outcomes.
The loudest and laziest comparison is Jersey Shore, but The Shire probably owes more to the modern progenitor of the genre, the 2004 MTV series Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County. In a similar fashion, it featured a cast of pretty young things falling in and out of love with one another.
Laguna Beach was followed by The Hills in 2006, and the popularity of those shows has now blown out to a bona fide genre, which includes the US's Jersey Shore, The City and Baldwin Hills and the British knock-offs Geordie Shore, The Only Way Is Essex and Made in Chelsea.
Those shows have (mostly) become enormous successes, and turned their stars - think Laguna Beach's Lauren Conrad and Jersey Shore's Snooki and ''The Situation'' - into household names.
In 2010, MTV produced a modest local offering in the genre, Freshwater Blue, set in Manly. But Australian networks have been hesitant to bring a soft-script show to market and the Australian appetite for such programs remains difficult to predict, dampened a little by what many perceive to be a cultural dislike of contrivance.
''It will be a bit of an education process,'' Campbell tells The Guide. ''It will be a polarising show, I have no doubt about that. There will be people who will love it and people who will hate it. That comes with the terrain of breaking new ground. It's not easy.''
To help combat that, Campbell says The Shire intentionally resembles a drama.
''You could be forgiven for thinking it is, or asking if they are actors. It has all the look and feel of an actual drama. What you forget is that these people aren't actors, they're real.''
One of the show's ''stars'', Mitch Dean, is modestly uneasy with the suggestion the show will make him famous. He came to The Shire, he says, with an open mind, well aware of how the game might be played.
''I went into this knowing that, I guess, it is at the mercy of the editor,'' he says. ''I could be portrayed as anything they want … but they can only work with what I give them, and I asked those questions, but I thought if I just be myself, I can't see it happening.''
He concedes his first day surrounded by cameras left him a little uneasy. ''I've never been shy, I've always been the class clown, but I've never done anything to this degree, in terms of of cameras. To be honest, the first day was daunting because there was a crew there. I didn't really know them, I felt really robotic and not myself, but everyone reassured me and, funnily enough, by the second or third day, it sounds corny, but I really didn't realise they were there.''
Sutherland Shire was chosen as a setting because it is known ''for its colour'', Campbell says. ''You're not looking for a boring suburb. That's part of the reason it was kind of a first choice for us, and I think it's delivered that. We're looking for colourful characters you don't necessarily see everywhere.''
Ten and Shine expect that hostility over the series, which is still filming, will dissipate once the stakeholders (and neighbours) get a proper look at the finished product. ''It's no secret the mayor was not happy about it,'' Campbell says. ''Did it send us into an unnecessarily hostile environment? Yes, it did. And that was driven by a series of events that was really unfortunate but out of our control.''
Ironically, Ten's hesitation over the series may have been allayed by another Shire girl, Lara Bingle. Her own foray into the (very) soft-script genre, Being Lara Bingle, has delivered reasonable ratings for Ten. It isn't a hit, but it's well clear of failure for the moment.
Campbell thinks it is the tip of the iceberg. ''Someone has to break ground in this territory,'' he says. ''We hope it spawns many shows in this genre.'' Good news for commercial TV, perhaps, but likely to give viewers fearful of shows such as The Only Way Is Bondi, Coogee Shore or The Real Housewives of Point Piper something to choke on.

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