I finally caught up with last night’s rebroadcast of Victoria Beckham: Coming to America. I could offer all sorts of excuses for not having watched the original Monday broadcast, but the fact was, I just didn’t care that much. In this respect, it would appear I am a true red-blooded American. Despite all the media buzz Posh’s mini reality show got, less than five million people watched the show’s first airing.
One could blame the show, which was contrived, warmed over, and simply boring–we’ve seen too many celebrities “exposing their real lives” (as set up and selectively edited by producers) for it to be interesting, or funny, to see Posh try to figure out how to throw one of those baseball thingies at a Dodgers’ game.
But the quality of the show doesn’t explain why so few people bothered to watch in the first place. Really, I think Mrs. David Beckham is another one of those British imports that fail to have the fascination for Americans that their packagers think they will. Much like the Spice Girls were, in fact. (Whether this bodes anything for her husband’s attempts to bend the reputation of American soccer I’ll leave to my footballing business colleague.) We have a whole country full of Hiltons; we don’t need to import rich nitwits to embarass themselves for us any more than we need them to show us how to pitch a baseball.
But then, I’m a bloody Yank. To get a view from the other side of the pond, read TIME editor and native Liverpudlian Michael Elliott’s view of the fascination of British celebs in America. What say you? Did Posh colonize your heart?