Patrick Freyne: Positive changes are afoot in the world of reality TV

There are a few moments during Stewarts & Hamiltons (Tuesday, E!), a scripted reality show about the family of Alana Stewart and her first ex-husband, the actor and piece of burnished mahogany, George Hamilton, when we see how non-celebrities live (sadly this is not sports commentator George Hamilton).

In this week’s episode, for example, shortly after their tattooed older son Ashley pretends to hump his hapless friend Pablo for larks, the camera pans around and we glimpse one of the heart-sick crew. There’s ennui in his eye. “I wanted to be the next Godard,” he calls to me sadly with his mind. “But this is my life now.”

Whenever an idle rich celebrity child is spawned, in some outer suburb an infant boom-mike operator is already indentured to follow and serve her. Such is life. It's like Upstairs, Downstairs but it's more front- of-camera, behind-camera.

It’s only a matter of time before there is some sort of insurrection and we tune in to find a studio runner wearing Hamilton’s skin as a mask (looking at Hamilton, this may have already happened).

This week Kimberly, daughter of Alana and George, spurns the advances of lovelorn friend Dean. “I don’t want my friend having sexy-time feelings towards me,” she says before having him administer back rubs and frolic with her in a park. Dean is a catch. “Look at how big that duck is,” he says, pointing at a swan.

Meanwhile, Ashley has been arrested at an LGBT centre for impersonating a police officer (he has a police badge, he explains matter-of-factly). This leads to his family surmising that he might be gay, which culminates with him pretending to “love” Pablo. He is not gay. He just impersonates policemen at LGBT centres for reasons he chooses not to share (the rich are not like you and me).

Finally, George, that varnished shillelagh of a man, takes his son GT and GT’s half-brother Sean (son of Rod Stewart) to the tanning salon in his new Bentley.

“[Tanning is] part of my life,” George tells us in a surprise twist. “You must drive around all day long and get bitches,” says Sean, by which he must mean literal bitches who have mistaken George for a tree.

Leaving George rotissering on a medium heat, Sean, who seemingly models himself on a party animal from a 1980s high- school sex comedy, takes young GT to meet women. “Excuse me I’ve got a Bentley,” he shouts at pedestrians, before crashing George’s Bentley. He was distracted, he says, because “this booty was poppin’.”

It is unclear whether he is speaking metaphorically about one of the pedestrians or is apprising us of a medical condition that renders him unable to drive safely (“Sir, I regret to inform you that your booty is poppin’,” says the doctor, “it is totally unsafe for you to be operating machinery.”)

George is summoned from the person-oven and storms into the garage spitting a lemon from his mouth and shaking the thyme from his head. “I don’t know when George is angry,” says Sean, “because he is so tan he doesn’t turn red or anything,”

Positive changes

Changes are afoot in the world of reality television. While Stewarts & Hamiltons is generously glazed with irony (like Skynet, scripted reality is becoming self-aware), it ultimately clings to the glitzy melodrama that comes from nothing being at stake.

Elsewhere, real-life experiences are making a comeback. I Am Cait (Sunday, E!) follows Caitlyn Jenner, formerly Bruce Jenner, after her transition from male to female.

In this week’s episode she spends time with a group of transgender women who speak about their experiences. Some have been denied employment, been verbally and physically assaulted and reluctantly turned to sex work to survive. They even point out how Caitlyn’s transition, difficult as it has been, was made easier by her “socio-economic status”. It is unusual for a show on E! to acknowledge class and race. Here they are explicitly mentioned several times.

Jenner herself is hugely sympathetic. The episode explores her insecurity about the sound of her voice, appearing in a swimsuit and whether she is attracted to men or women. All the time she is guided by strong, confident trans women who know a thing or two about struggle and identity. “You’re allowed [to] start in one place and end in another and not completely erase who you are,” says a woman called Candace. It’s not just trans people who can benefit from such advice.

Even more impressively, there is another new programme called I Am Jazz (Monday, TLC) which follows Jazz Jennings, a 14-year-old transgender girl and her family. They look like a family on a Nickelodeon drama – sweet father, protective mother, wise older sister, and boyband- haired twin brothers. In their unwavering love and respect for Jazz, they are awesome.

Jazz is a funny, clever, brave girl and the show is genuinely educational without ever straying from a familiar, fly-on-the-wall reality TV format. If anything, the familiarity of style makes the complexity of the content easier to understand.

We learn about Jazz’s younger years and the balancing act she needs to do, both medically, with hormone treatments and puberty-delaying drugs, and psychologically, as she worries about appearing feminine and how to interact with her peers.

“[The boys in her class] will give everyone hugs and they’ll give her a high five and it hurts her,” one of her brothers explains.

We see her lovely grandparents gamely struggling with the terminology, her parents worrying and her brothers goofing around. We see her slumber-partying with friends, playing soccer on the beach and nervously shopping for swimwear with her sister. And I can’t recall being so angered by television as when two horrible teenagers call her names as she sits outside a restaurant.

I spend half my life joking about ridiculous reality TV programmes (see the first part of this column), but with this show, it's like reality producers decided that they didn't want to exploit people any more and wanted to use their powers for good. I Am Jazz is very good. Programmes like this breed understanding, which breeds kindness. I Am Jazz makes the world a bit more kind.