MTV show The Valleys is 'drivel TV for drivel brains'

IT’S been said that the new Wales-based reality TV programme makes the trashy The Only Way Is Essex look like Downton Abbey.

MTV’s The Valleys follows nine young people as they move in together in Cardiff.

The first edition of the new show, which includes two local wannabe celebrities in Swansea hairdresser Nicole Morris, who admits she “would love to be famous”, and Port Talbot’s Lateysha Grace, a 19-year-old accounts administrator, aired this week at 10pm, well after the watershed.

The show, which featured nudity and scenes of a sexual nature, has been described by some as being “lewd and expletive-filled”.

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And despite viewers being almost overburdened with reality TV of late, the initial reaction of this latest offering has been one of disbelief.

South Wales-based radio DJ Chris Blumer said: “It makes The Only Way Is Essex look like Downton Abbey... I can’t wait to see the next episode.”

Former Bridgend prop forward David Rees, who is from the Valleys himself, said: “It looks as though they have been paid in cheap vodka.”

Of the comments left on the Evening Post website, one reader said: “This is drivel TV to appease those who have drivel brains, unable to comprehend a good storyline that is now severely lacking on modern day television.

“For the sake of humanity this drivel has to stop.”

Another Post reader, by the name of Jiffy, said: “None of these tangoed idiots will embarrass the Welsh more than Maureen Rees from Driving School.”

And it was not just viewers who expressed their shock, with Welsh politicians also queuing up to condemned the show after branding it an “embarrassment” to Wales.

Rhondda MP Chris Bryant said the show was “twice as bad” as he had feared it was going to be.

His comments came 24 hours after Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood hit out at the show’s premise, and followed an outcry on Twitter, where many viewers said the portrayal made them “ashamed to be Welsh”.

Programme bosses have insisted the show is “absolutely not about stereotyping”.

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We asked - what did you think of the new MTV show?

Laura McFarlane said: “Although I am seriously disgusted at what I saw, I am also seriously addicted.

“Will these Valleys kids, obsessed with sex and booze, actually turn their lives around?

“Will they realise that they are actually worth more then getting their bits out for five minutes of fame? Or will they carry on acting like sex-crazed animals let loose in an off licence?

“Admit it, you are also going to watch this car crash TV, feeling thoroughly ashamed to be Welsh, but also secretly rooting for these underdogs to do good.”

Adrian Miller, 27, said: “The show is nearly identical to MTV’s recent big hit Geordie Shore except that the location is Cardiff and there are the obligatory constant references to sheep.

"The Valleys plays up to the worst stereotypes of modern young people, showing the ‘cast’ to be shallow, self-obsessed and arrogant and focuses almost entirely on their drunken and crass shenanigans.

"Personally I found these individuals and their behaviour irritating in the extreme, which rendered the show almost unwatchable. Of course, it is exactly this type of behaviour, by these types of individuals, that gives such shows their shock appeal and entertainment value.