The Only Way Is Essex is a BAFTA award-winning reality TV soap opera. That’s a peculiar genre that the producers call a “scripted reality”. The release was carried out by ITV2 with the first season release date on the 10th of October 2010. Later the series was pushed to ITVBe channel. The Only Way is Essex season 20 release date hasn’t been announced yet but the show is popular among the TV viewers.
Filming & Format
The filming is done in Brentwood, England. This is a show about real people living in various modified scripted situations. However, not everything is scripted here, cause in every new episode the cast is allowed to improvise using unscripted lines in scripted situations. The host and the narrator of the series is Denise van Outen originating from Basildon, Essex. British filmmakers call their project an answer to The Hills and Jersey Shore American TV series.
Broadcast
Every season lasts for 6 weeks. In February of 2014 was pushed from ITV2 channel to ITVBe, its sister channel. Season 1 was made up of 10 episodes half an hour each. Season one was also followed by a Christmas special episode. The series enjoyed extreme popularity and the producers decided to extend the time of every new episode to 45 minutes. On the 22nd of May 2011, the series got its first BAFTA Award.
On the 13th of March 2016, ITVBe released a documentary about the show presented by one of the former cast members of the project named Mark Wright. The documentary was devoted to the history of the project. Celebrities from the project discuss how they got popularity and became influential.
Criticism
Scripted reality genre often attracts criticism, however, the series created in this style are always attractive to the society. Authenticity is often questioned. The show was several times negatively described as a stereotypical representation of Essex. True Essex residents didn’t like the representation calling it completely fake.
One of the live episodes released was entitled “an utter car crash”. The episode was called probably the worst TV project ever. The members of the cast often suffered from negative attitude in the society.
Twentieth Season Air Date
There’s no official info on The Only Way is Essex and its 20th season release date, but we will let you know more about the future of the series when more info appears in the official media of ITVBe.
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