TV VIEW - When Reality Begins to Look a Little Unreal - 0 views
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When Reality Begins to Look a Little Unreal
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Television's reality formats include everything from the nightly news to talk shows to ''based on fact'' movies to the Summer Olympics to Phil, Oprah and Geraldo. The only productions definitely not admitted under the reality umbrella are sitcoms and action-adventures.
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Fox Broadcasting, already happy about its ''America's Most Wanted,'' a package that adds up to an excuse for the detailed re-creation of violent crimes, is now pushing ''Beyond Tomorrow,'' a magazine about technology developments. The premiere featured a reporter in a sushi restaurant in Japan ''accidentally'' spilling sauce on his $35 polo shirt, which was then cleaned to spotless perfection by high-frequency sound waves.
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How much of this kind of reality can the public take? Producers clearly see no end in sight, and the results are increasingly becoming more questionable.
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This is what's called a ''reality-based'' series, a label that has less to do with reality than comforting formula. The cameras do not go to a real hospital. But three real doctors are on the production staff.
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His life shattered, he now has the dubious pleasure of knowing that, for some 20 minutes, he was the star of a television reality entertainment.
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''On Trial'' opens with an announcer exclaiming that viewers are about to see ''Real people! Real Cases! Real Life!'' Mr. Clooney, a distinguished-looking fellow, fills in the pertinent facts.
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Everything is designed, they say, to ''give the show its docudrama look.'' The show's regular staff of three doctors are depicted by actors.
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Needless to say, medical problems and crises have long been popular on television, especially on soap operas. ''Family Medical Center'' merely dispenses with extraneous plot and character developments and goes right to the medical core. A press release is candid about the show's interpretation of reality: ''It will have suspense, conflict and a resolution, which in almost all cases will be a happy one.''
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The show looks as real as television entertainment can possibly make it. Alert viewers, however, will note whizzing by in the final credits the following advisory: '' 'Family Medical Center' is a dramatization. The characters are fictional and bear no resemblance to persons living or dead.''
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Television reality wears many masks. A key to the overall picture was provided by one of those actors who deceived Oprah Winfrey and Geraldo Rivera with false impersonations on air. Why not, he shrugged, it's all entertainment. Frightening but not beyond comprehension.