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The Real Housewives of New York

 (Reality series -- Bravo, Tues. March 4, 11 p.m.)

By BRIAN LOWRY

Alex McCord, left, Jill Zarin and Bethenny Frankel are among the high society gals at the center of Bravo's 'The Real Housewives of New York.'

Produced by Ricochet Television. Executive producers, Nick Emmerson, Jennifer O'Connell; co-executive producers, Lenid Rolov, Kirsty Robson; supervising producer, Barrie Bernstein; producer, Keira Brings; line producer, Mark Blatty
 
With: Bethenny Frankel, LuAnn de Lesseps, Alex McCord, Ramona Singer, Jill Zarin.
 

Forgive a slight unbefitting the "elite of society," but these "real housewives" are too predictable and boring to engender the hatred that the producers and Bravo clearly wish to inspire. Perhaps self-consciously emulating what worked for the Orange County version, the women do their best to fulfill every stereotype about upper-crust Manhattan socialites unafraid to say things like "I'm proud of being a sexy mom." Not to make this a West Coast-East Coast thang, but if the original was a guilty pleasure, the second is merely an irritant.

The five women at the core of this latest edition include a countess (LuAnn de Lesseps, a former model married to French aristocrat Alexandre Count de Lesseps); the cringeworthy Ramona Singer, who seems to delight in embarrassing her 13-year-old daughter; and Bethenny Frankel, already a reality veteran of “The Apprentice: Martha Stewart.”

As for the housewives themselves, they shop. They vacation in the Hamptons or the Caribbean. They flirt with hunky male tennis pros. They hire an au pair instructed to speak only French to the kids. They host dinners and pursue charity seemingly for their own self-aggrandizement. They let the poor maid clean up after their dog. And they talk (and talk and talk) about how fabulous their lives are, openly referring to their status as part of "the elite" and such goals as "befriending people in higher and higher levels of society," unburdened as to how very 18th century that sounds.

To paraphrase an old joke, the jewelry is real, but everything else is probably fake.

What's lacking, at least in the introduction to this batch of housewives, is a natural bombshell on the order of "Orange County" party gal Jo De La Rosa, whose drop-dead looks landed her a pilot spinoff. Chalk it up perhaps to Manhattan's inherent snottiness, but those West Coast housewives also seemed so much less pretentious that their shallowness was far easier to swallow.

"Real Housewives of New York" thus turns an invisible corner, from presenting these wealthy folk in a voyeuristic, almost anthropological way to fostering an active sense of antipathy toward them. Even those behind the dramas "Lipstick Jungle" and "Cashmere Mafia" understand that a program about ambitious career women attempting to "have it all" requires a measure of empathy for those engaged in that struggle, but there's no such balance to be found here.

Indeed, for all the "mistress of the universe" accessories, these women seem blithely unaware that when venturing into the realm of docusoaps, all the control belongs to the dudes in the editing bay. It's the kind of amateur's misstep they might have avoided had they spent less time posing and posturing and a little more watching TV.

Camera, Matt Elkind; supervising editor, Peter Gamba; casting producers, Leah Hariton, James Davis. RUNNING TIME: 60 MIN.