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Brynne: My Bedazzled Life

Memo to Lara Bingle: Please watch and learn from Brynne Edelsten. This is how it's done.

Memo to Lara Bingle: Please watch and learn from Brynne Edelsten. This is how it’s done.

For the record, I’m no fan of fly-on-the-wall celebrity TV, although early seasons of The Simple Life and The Osbournes did suck me in.

Since then, we’ve seen so many wanna-bes and washed-ups thinking they could kick-start or reignite careers by parading around in front of cameras that they blur into banality.

Being Lara Bingle was boring television because on screen Lara Bingle is boring. Dancing with the Stars showed us that. In the same season we were introduced to Brynne Edelsten, the 29 year old bride of 69 year old millionaire Geoffrey Edelsten. Aside from her eye-catching frame, dizzy persona and taste for excess, it showed her spirit could not be so readily crushed by criticism when told her dancing looked like “a bedazzled sack of potatoes rolling down stairs.”

Her utterly unforgettable hosting of The Morning Show not long afterwards was deer-in-headlights TV.

Now on Seven she is front and centre in her own observational series, Brynne: My Bedazzled Life.

Like the Paris Hilton series, this benefits from a defiant sense of humour. The producers have cleverly concocted some awkward situations which elicit some banal reactions. And all of it works a treat.

She has an acting lesson with former Neighbours casting guru Jan Russ, she upstages Dancing judge and pal Josh Horner at A Chorus Line. She goes shopping for frocks and shoes. She cooks Geoffrey Edelsten a dinner in order to tackle him on her desire for having babies.

On shopping:
– By the end of the day I got the invoice. A quarter of a million dollars worth of clothes that I hadn’t even tried on. I thought ‘oh my gosh Geoff is going to kill me.’

 I don’t know why but spending a bit of money just makes me feel so much better.

On acting lessons with Jan Russ:
– I just hope she can get me up to speed because acting is a skill. It’s kind of like dancing but with talking too.

– Jan’s really great and really respected and there’s only really one problem in the room and that’s me.

– Luckily I was playing a desperate character because I was just desperate to get out of there.

 – I’m not a quitter but I’m really going to have to think about it if I’m going to do movies.

On learning a script:
– I read it but I really didn’t take it in.

On personal space:
– Even if it’s my husband I don’t like anybody to come inside my bubble.

On wanting to become pregnant to Geoffrey Edelsten:
– I really hope he jumps on board because I’d hate to give him an ultimatum.

On cooking a dinner to bring up the topic of getting pregnant:
– If having a baby hangs off my cooking skills I’m in trouble.

– I’m hoping it turns out good. Or at least edible.

– For some reason the flames come out from under it.

Is she putting it on? Is she for real? Who cares. Like a bit of Green Acres in penthouse Melbourne, this ticks the boxes and knows its audience well.

Through the first episode Edelsten spends more time with her fluffy white dog than she does with her husband, which probably explains his line that he would have preferred the dog to be skewered for dinner than Brynne’s own cooking. How much the series delves into their ‘unconventional’ relationship remains to be seen. So far it’s all about keeping up appearances, than providing insight…

Lawrence Mooney provides a cynical narration to this car-crash telly, that is a lot more fun than Being Lara Bingle.

Brilliantly bad TV.

Brynne: My Bedazzled Life is coming soon to Seven.

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