This is Liverpool #TIL

There once was a sad ‘Towie‘ (The Only Way Is Essex) lookie-likeeeee ‘reality’ TV show called Desperate Scousewives. It bombed. Despite good photography of the Liverpool locations and moving at a good pace, the reality stars in it were awful and the storyline worse than could have been written by 5 year olds. And it had all been done before. And, ok, the elephant in the room is that they were a bunch of tedious Scousers and ‘Wools’ (as people with accents from just outside of Liverpool are called), and that whining Scouse accent is so damn annoying.

Unsurprisingly, the show got dumped and everybody connected with it was thrown into the River Mersey.

Well, not everybody it seems. A group disgruntled by having their chance of fame and fortune as reality TV stars thwarted, got back together. By using kids from media courses at university, alongside DSLR cameras recording video instead of taking stills, they auditioned and filmed a replacement show they are calling ‘This Is Liverpool‘. They left an animated audio teaser on Youtube.

That was six months ago.

Nobody noticed.

Then, this month, Phenomenal Pictures, the company behind ‘This is Liverpool‘ released a minute long teaser video onto Youtube.

Success!

It went viral.

There is now a campaign to stop ‘This is Liverpool‘ from being broadcast. The hatred has been exacerbated by one of the two Mayors of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, taking a break from trying to censor which newspapers are allowed to be sold in Liverpool, in order to hit out at the show. In his eyes, he was ‘not at all impressed’ by the trailer. But hey, why would a grumpy old bloke a few years away from his free bus pass be impressed with 20-somethings in a fast moving reality TV show? He’s much more suited to sitting round with old men in a pub singing The Red Flag and raising a glass to the miners’ strike of the 1980s.

The point here is that from just a one minute sampler, so much hysteria and hatred was hyped up. More importantly TV channels were contacted by drunken/stoned Scousers demanding that the show not be broadcast. Despite organisations like Channel 4 saying that they had no connection with the show, having not commissioned it, not bought it, and not even knowing the company that had produced it, the barracking, in typical Liverpudlian way, just wouldn’t stop. Repeated demands from typical Scousers, who never listen and always get things wrong, for the series to not be broadcast on E4 wouldn’t stop despite repeated assurances from Channel 4 that they really really knew nothing about it.

Brilliant.

All I can say is well done Phenomenal Pictures. You hit the national and regional newspapers, got Facebork and other social media buzzing, and achieved one of the most successful marketing campaigns ever!

And all for free.

Absolutely perfect.

As it is, the film makers are saying the pilot episode will be released during the second week in March. And, of course, they mean via Youtube.

If they play their cards right and have the good deal with revenue sharing that Youtube can provide, I can see it certainly being a worthwhile stunt financially. Heck, it doesn’t ever need to be broadcast on mainstream media.

I like ‘This Is Liverpool‘ most of all because it has caused a lot of abuse, threats, swearing, screaming and shouting from Liverpudlians who object to a TV show, in their eyes, misrepresenting them as a people full of abuse, threats, swearing, screaming and shouting.

Enjoy: