Some people despise reality TV shows and can’t wait to point out to you how it’s brain numbing TV at its worst. Now I fall both sides of the fence on the argument, because I do think quite a lot of “reality” TV is about as real as a scripted soap, but I also believe we can learn things from some reality TV.

Case in point… I’ve been watching a UK show called The Family. The series is in its second season and features the Grewal family going about life as cameras capture their every move. What I find fascinating about this season is the Grewals are a British Indian family and this is a wonderful document as to how similar we all are, regardless of race or culture. The Grewals have the same issues as most of us and it also brings us great insight into Asian family culture. I’ll pop the trailer for this season below so you can check it out. If we can learn anything from reality TV it should be that we all have far more similarities than we do differences and we should embrace that fact.

Apparently Oprah has a bit of a huge announcement in the works and it’s not going to please fans of her long running talk show. The first lady of talk is allegedly calling it quits on completion of her 25th season. That means Oprah fans will be tuning in for the last time around September 2011.

The Oprah Winfrey Show first aired way back in 1986, I know can you believe that, remember that big hair?! Wow, well Oprah has her own production company and network, so let’s assume she’s not going to fade off into the distance never to be heard from again. The OWN channel is expected to debut next year some time.

You know how I was saying some reality shows are informative and some are insipid bowls of garbage (well that’s not exactly word for word, but close enough), well Beauty and the Geek is the latter as far as I’m concerned. That said this show has managed to garner a second season from channel 7 in Australia so it obviously has a fairly big fanbase.

The final of Beauty and the Geek Australia airs Thursday November 26 at 8.30pm and you’ll get to see one ‘beauty’ and one ‘geek’ walk away with the prize money if not their pride. Should you feel you fit into either category and you want to be the next beauty or geek, you can head over to Yahoo7 and apply for the next season.

I have no idea how this show has managed to squeeze out four seasons, but it has; someone has friends in high places. That said the ratings are still on the slippery slope with the series reaching an all new low of just over 5 million viewers, around a quarter of a million less than last week. Needless to say this means Heroes was beaten by all and sundry, including House with its fairly whopping 13 million and How I met Your Mother with around 8.5 million.

Are any of you guys still watching Heroes? Even my friends who were die-hard fans of the show aren’t that fussed about the new season. If you are still watching, what’s your reason? Do you just want to see how it ends, feel you’ve come this far, might as well see it out?

If you were a fan of Guiding Light and in particular a fan of the Otalia duo, this one is for you. The couple Olivia Spencer and Natalia Rivera Aitoro are soon to be featured in a web series called Venice. Yes they were that popular! The couple are played by Crystal Chappell, and Jessica Leccia.

Anyway let’s cut to the chase, the first teaser for the series is now available, so Guiding Light fans and Otalia fans, check it out below. Oh and incase you want to know the song is by Jen Foster and it’s called Venice Beach.

I know we usually cover TV shows in all their genres here at Snarkerati, but one area that we tend to overlook is the arena of TV news. This is odd given TV news is something all networks feature (in some form) and there are even entire networks dedicated to this particular TV genre, but is it a dying genre? This is a question a friend and I recently discussed when speaking about how the media and in particular television news seems to have gone from being a source of professional and scrupulous newsworthy information, to now being a politically biased, corporate led melting pot of deceit and at times misleading infotainment.

Whether you agree or not, TV news is changing and there are numerous reasons for this. The internet and immediacy of information being two of the main reasons, but also social change, policy, business strategies, ratings and trying to compete in the new world of “journalism”. What do you think of the news you now receive through some of the major TV news outlets? Have you spotted the political leanings, the “fluffed” up story telling to make things sound less factual and more terrifying, amazing or ‘insert headline grabbing adjective here’.

Writer, director, producer and cool looking dude Larry Charles seems to be working on something new for NBC. Possibly most famous for writing shows like Mad About You (loved that show!) and Seinfeld, Charles is now said to be working on a comedy series about scifi geeks.

In Charles’ own words the new show will depict “contemporary American life through the prism of a do-it-yourself homemade aesthetic that will mix mediums.” What he actually means is a group of scifi fanboys (and girls hopefully! We do exist!) get together in a small town and make their own version of a TV show they’ve all loved that was canceled. Sounds pretty cool, hopefully it will all come together and make it to air at some point.

It’s caused more than its fair share of upset, Jennifer Morrison leaving House, walking out on her men in the show, never to be seen again. The blogging world went nutso and House fansites cried afoul that Morrison was an awesome character and how could the producers do this!

Well now there’s a rumor floating around that she might eventually return after all. Morrison herself was speaking to E! Online at the Star Trek bluray release party and even she seemed completely baffled as to what her status is. Morrison states “I’m still a series regular, technically. I really don’t know. All I know is that I don’t know. And they keep making it very clear to me that I don’t know. I feel bad [because I wish] that I had an answer for people. But, uh, anything could happen I guess.”

Personally I think if she’s been shelved and they haven’t even had the decency to clarify with her where she’s at she should flip them the bird and go find other projects.

Apparently anonymous blogger ‘Belle de Jour’ has outed herself after an ex threatened to do it for her. Now scientist Brooke Magnanti says it was she who penned the blog which led to numerous books and the TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl starring Billie Piper.

Magnanti is now a research scientist in child health for the University of Bristol and apparently her present job is safe, with the University allegedly commenting that her past has no relevance with regards to her present position (pun intended). Another mystery no one really cared about solved, huzzah!

It seems the Aussie public are relatively split in their feelings as to whether Rove’s announcement on Sunday night to quit his show was a good or bad thing. Rove McManus for those outside of Australia is essentially Australia’s Jay Leno, he is the face of weekly, late night talk show mayhem. Rove also produces numerous other projects and hosts “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader”.

Even though Rove is a popular guy, loads of people - me included - feel this couldn’t have come at a better time. Recently his show “Rove” has suffered with abysmal guests and out of studio interviews for actual celebrities. It seemed like every week it was another case of his friends being brought on as guests and any non Aussie stars being interviewed in a hotel room someplace. Maybe this is a little telling of how non Australian celebrities view Australia. Whatever the case Rove’s show slid downhill faster than the roadrunner on acid. Good luck to him though, maybe he’ll join the 7PM project and put some actual life into that.

AMC’s The Prisoner remake premiered over the weekend and the ratings came back not too bad for a miniseries premiere, with around a 2.2 million pickup. The show is a reworking of the original 1960’s TV series of the same name. Back in the day the series starred Patrick McGoohan, the new miniseries stars Jim Caviezel as The Prisoner, aka Number 6.

Sadly the response from the blogging media hasn’t been great and I’d have to agree with them. The themes of the original, were - at the time - frightening within and of themselves, now we’re living in times where these things are ever present (surveillance, media lies etc) some of the enigmatic terror of the original is lost in translation. Still, it’s not all bad, Sir Ian McKellan puts in a good performance.

Don’t all groan at once. The Hills ’stars’ Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag are apparently touting their own reality series around Hollywood. The pair allegedly want to show people more of their day to day lives and the things they do.

Personally I’d rather poke my eye out with a spork than see any more of these two media whores, but maybe that’s just me since they do tend to have quite the following. No word on whether this show will ever see the light of day, if it does though the pair will still appear on The Hills, so you’ll get double the dose… ugh. Maybe they could get Jon Gosselin to star in it with them, just to triple the torture?

Excellent new ABC comedy Modern Family has managed to secure Minnie Driver for a guest stint on the show.

Driver will play a former co-worker of Claire in an upcoming episode which will air in the new year. Apparently they’ll bump into each other many years after they last saw each other and realize that a lot has changed in their lives.

Modern Family is an excellent comedy, which deals with real life issues in a witty, interesting way. The show continues to gain in the ratings and has been picked up for a full season which is great news for those of us getting hooked on it. If you haven’t seen it yet, I urge you to check it out.

Young girls raised in the 70’s all either wanted to be one of Charlie’s Angels or knew someone who did. With stars who became iconic in their respective roles, Charlie’s Angels were independent, smart, adventurous and above all glamorous. Those who then went on to see the new Charlie’s Angels movies with Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz couldn’t help but feel a little bit disappointed at what had become of the lovely Angels.

Looks like ABC aren’t quite finished with Charlie and his girls yet though. They’re looking at an update of the original TV series with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles producer Josh Friedman writing and producing.

Drew Barrymore will once again be involved, but this time only as an executive producer. The new venture aims to appeal to a new generation of viewers, but maintain enough of the original to win over fans of the first season. Here’s hoping they don’t ruin it.

Lovely Charmed actress Alyssa Milano has signed up for a guest spot on ABC show Castle. Milano will play the ex of quirky Richard Castle in an episode due to air in early 2010. The title of the episode will be “A Rose for Everafter”, and no doubt Milano will play some kind of cutesy ex on the show.

With Castle being picked up for a full second season, the show seems to be doing well in the ratings. Personally, Castle seemed to lose it a little for me after the first few episodes, with the characters being too one-dimensional and the stories being too ‘same-same’. It’ll be interesting to see how well it does in its second season.

There have been rumors swirling for a few days now that TV show Flash Forward might be on its last legs.

The show which deals with an international blackout where people saw glimpses of their futures, could be doing with a little time traveling or fortune telling itself. The ratings have dropped down to a series low of only 8.33million, leaving it floundering at third in its time slot. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a flash forward to see if the show will still be on air this time next year?

It’s a sad day really when a show that starts out so well and has some excellent actors in it can’t make it past it’s first season. Maybe people just aren’t ready for this kind of show, or maybe it’s just too slow and people are losing interest. Whatever the reason, looks like the writing could be on the wall for FlashForward.

This is truly devastating news. FOX has carried out what we all feared most and canceled the excellent Josh Whedon/Eliza Dushku vehicle, Dollhouse.

The show has been struggling since its beginning, with rewrites, episodes being moved around, a terrible time slot and very little backing from FOX overall. Ratings were never that good, even though the show itself continued to grow in depth, story and appeal to fans.

The great news is that the show will complete its 13 episode order, so at least we’ll get a decent ending that won’t leave fans wondering what happened. Whedon will hopefully wrap things up into a nice little bow, of course he may not so that a movie can be made further down the line. This is sad news regardless as the lovely Eliza Dushku deserves a decent hit show. Let’s face it, did anyone really ever think Ghost Whisperer would still be on air?

There has to be something worth getting excited about when the writer of the outstanding Buffy episode “Once More With Feeling” and Mad Men puts pen to paper for a Fright Night remake.

Marti Noxon will be reworking the hit cult horror movie Fright Night, which was a camp , amusing creepy movie from the 80’s. If anyone can pull of this type of rewrite, Noxon can. She’s also the lady behind Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog so has plenty of experience in humorous scripting.

There’s no word on when we can expect to see the finished article, but this may be a horror movie worth looking out for given the awesome TV writing involved.

Great news for fans of the fifth cylon from Battlestar Galactica. Kate Vernon who played Ellen Tigh, will be joining the cast of Heroes, and no, it’s not just a rumor.

Greg Grunberg revealed the news that Kate would be taking up a role on the show via his Twitter account a few days ago. There’s no word as yet as to which role Kate will play, but let’s hope it’s a good role deserving of her acting abilities.

Although Heroes has clearly gone downhill over the last few seasons, it’s nice to see that they can still attract good actors to the show. Here’s hoping Kate sticks around for a while, that just might be worth watching.