AAustralia’s newest reality show, Made in Bondi, follows the lives and loves of Sydney’s so-called “social elite” in one of the city’s most desirable suburbs. There are plenty of shirtless men lounging on a boat, young women sipping from Stanley mugs, the promise of a love triangle and plenty of vague international accents of wealth. It’s bright, shiny and beautiful.

Also, the show is utterly boring. After producers reportedly failed to secure any of the real Bondi celebrities, they cast a ragtag group of people in their 20s and 30s from across the country who seemingly have nothing to say to each other. (“What’s your favourite food?” “Italian,” is typical dialogue.) It doesn’t matter that only one of the cast is actually from Bondi, but it does matter that in the three episodes I’ve seen, there’s no humour, no real drama and nothing happens upstairs. (Another example of this show’s chat level: “If you could be a goldfish or an eel, which would you choose?”)

I’m probably not alone in that assessment. Ratings were mediocre when it first aired, with the show only getting 206,000 viewers nationwide, despite airing right after the hit show The Voice – which got 901,000 viewers, to give you an idea of ​​the drop. The show also lost its time slot to ABC, which can’t be a good sign.

If Made in Bondi eventually joins the ranks of one-season Australian reality wonders, it would be a blow to Seven. Made in Bondi was on a roll as a spin-off of Made in Chelsea, the hit British series that managed to survive 26 seasons and counting. Made in Bondi feels like it was created for that ready-made global audience – rather than the real Bondi, the show was filmed 30 minutes’ drive away on the far less glamorous beaches of Brighton-Le-Sands. Which is fine if you’ve never been here and don’t notice the difference. “Our intention is to showcase a vibrant Australian beach lifestyle,” the producers said when interviewed by a publication called Double Bay Today (enter them a reality show!) and said: “Brighton-Le-Sands offered logistical advantages.”

But if you look at Australia’s track record, it’s not the glitzy, glamorous and aspirational reality shows that people really want – it’s the wild ones. Among Australia’s reality hits is Married at First Sight, which was largely filmed in a block of dreary serviced apartments, not on a beautiful beach. In the series, which became a huge hit in the UK, two women are stopped from getting into a physical fight by their TV “husbands” before one of them throws red wine on the other’s head. Real Housewives of Melbourne, a show whose best moments included an argument over who called whom a “skank bitch” and lines like “go suck your own damn head”, is considered a cult hit among fans of the Housewives franchise. Real Housewives of Sydney admittedly may have pushed the boundaries of wild too far – the series was deemed too nasty for international export in its first season – but was rebooted and renewed for a third season. These shows show the real Australia: undignified, full of foul language and prone to violence.

Made in Bondi, on the other hand, attempted to sell a false and shallow ideal of Australia; not unlike Netflix’s Byron Baes, which showcased the dazzling but ultimately boring Instagram influencers of this beach enclave as a reality show, then flopped and was never re-released.

If the kind of reality shows that have succeeded – or failed – overseas can teach us anything, it’s that the most interesting thing about Australia may not be the beautiful people parading along the beaches of Bondi-slash-Brighton-Le-Sands, but someone wiping poo out of the toilet bowl with his TV wife’s toothbrush (Mafs) or lines like “I’m not a gynaecologist, but I know a cunt when I see one” (Real Housewives of Melbourne). I pray our TV executives learn that lesson soon.