CBS Launches Hick Hunt
It looks like "The Osbournes" will soon be getting some new neighbors.
CBS talent scouts are fanning out across the backwoods of America in search of a rural, rustically telegenic family willing to star in a new reality show inspired by "The Beverly Hillbillies" -- with cement pond (swimming pool) and all.
The half-hour, weekly show, tentatively titled "The Real Beverly Hillbillies," is being developed for a mid-season or summer launch next year, said CBS spokesman Chris Ender.
Development of "The Real Beverly Hillbillies" follows the roaring ratings success of MTV's "The Osbournes," which documents the life of British rocker Ozzy Osbourne and his family in their Beverly Hills home. [Both CBS and MTV are owned by Viacom.]
"Without question, the success of 'The Osbournes' inspired the timing of this, but the show by its origins will not be a duplicate," Ender said.
Like the premise of the long-running CBS hit comedy about a poor mountaineer and his kin who strike it rich, the new series will transplant a real-life family from their humble home in the sticks to a mansion in posh, palm-lined Beverly Hills, California.
And like the original comedy, the show will capitalize on the strangers-in-a-strange-land dynamics between the family members and their new upscale environs and neighbors.
While the new series is expected to be played for laughs, network executives insist they are not out to make their latest reality stars look foolish.
"The intent is to be (respectful) but at the same time enjoy the humor that comes from the fish-out-of-water scenario of the show," Ghen Maynard, CBS vice president of alternative programming, told Daily Variety. "We want a family who has a sense of humor about themselves."
CBS, which brought such reality hits as "Survivor" and "Big Brother" to U.S. television, still owns rights to the "Beverly Hillbillies" title.
The original show, which aired from 1962 to 1971, was one of several rural situation comedies that were staples of the CBS lineup in the '60s, including "The Andy Griffith Show," "Petticoat Junction" and "Green Acres."
For its latest venture, CBS wants a multi-generation brood of five or six -- ideally, parents, kids and grandparents willing to relocate for a year.
Network officials say they are not seeking look-alikes or substitutes for the original show's characters -- patriarch Jed Clampett, the excitable, cranky Granny, the dumb-as-a-board Jethro, or the wide-eyed, backwoods beauty Elly May.
And it's not clear whether producers will find folks who actually eat possum stew, keep farm "critters" in their house or think of a swimming pool as a "cement pond."
But CBS will zero in on the same geographical origins of the sitcom's Clampett Clan, who hailed from Tennessee.
CBS spokesman Ender said, "The search will primarily be focused in mountainous, rural areas of Arkansas, West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky. But we wouldn't rule out a family from other areas of the country as well."