Invasion Iowa....

Image hosted by Photobucket.comI was never really a diehard fan of reality TV. I haven't followed any of the top draw reality TV shows like Survivor, The Amazing Race, The Apprentice, The Contender, The Bachelor, etc. I did however got to see a number of episodes from Fear Factor, the third season of American Idol, and actually liked and even regularly watched some of the other, "non-mainstream" reality shows like Combat Missions, Junkyard Wars, and Faking It. While reality TV seems to be "in" thing nowadays, I never really found myself drawn to the vast majority of shows of this genre. Not that they were bad or anything. They just didn't arouse my interest at the time.

That's why I'm a bit surprised that I found myself regularly watching a relatively new reality TV show called Invasion Iowa. It stars William Shatner of Star Trek fame, and the schtick of the series is fooling the small American town of Riverside, Iowa (incidentally the fictional future birth place of Capt. James T. Kirk) into believing that their town would be the film location for an independent sci-fi film featuring a script written by Shatner along with Leonard Nimoy.

The crew, including a cast of professional actors playing somewhat "off-the-wall" characters, spent nine-days pretending to be filming, and they even auditioned and recruited locals to portray key characters in the so-called "movie."

The show is actually quite funny, and the interaction of people from small-town America with the eccentric actors from glitzy Los Angeles can be really amusing and entertaining. Here in the Philippines the show is aired Thursdays on Star World.

Hmmm...I guess I have a somewhat weird taste in television programs. :-)

Links:

Joe Schmo producers fool entire town with fake Shatner film for new Spike series.
Riverside previews 'Invasion Iowa'

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