Lorena occasionally used to watch the Orange County and New York City versions and I have had some exposure to the content but looks like she got tired of them pretty quickly. Bravo was using a formula for the series and everything started to look staged. It was also clear that real housewives of wherever did not live like that and as much as these women were pretending to be wealthy (and some of them actually were) they were more than anything, desperate for attention.
So isn't it interesting that the versions for Canada, Greece, and Israel are actually based there but the one with French housewives is actually not based anywhere close to France. Disappointing for us Francophiles, it is actually based, you guessed it, in Beverly Hills and that is why the name of the show is: “Les Vraies Housewives de Beverly Hills.” For some strange reasons the only French word they used is "vraies" for "real" and I am sure that all of my French friends are offended that even the name is not French. So why not Paris? Frédéric Pedraza, an executive at NT1, the channel that broadcasts the French adaptation, told The New York Times: “We have rich, glamorous women, of course, but they would never expose themselves in that manner.” So basically they got losers from French who are so Americanized that they agree initially to be nice to each other and then eventually engage in backbiting and even violence. Alas, we would never know how the real wealthy live in France.
So isn't it interesting that the versions for Canada, Greece, and Israel are actually based there but the one with French housewives is actually not based anywhere close to France. Disappointing for us Francophiles, it is actually based, you guessed it, in Beverly Hills and that is why the name of the show is: “Les Vraies Housewives de Beverly Hills.” For some strange reasons the only French word they used is "vraies" for "real" and I am sure that all of my French friends are offended that even the name is not French. So why not Paris? Frédéric Pedraza, an executive at NT1, the channel that broadcasts the French adaptation, told The New York Times: “We have rich, glamorous women, of course, but they would never expose themselves in that manner.” So basically they got losers from French who are so Americanized that they agree initially to be nice to each other and then eventually engage in backbiting and even violence. Alas, we would never know how the real wealthy live in France.