'UnREAL' Reveals the Dark Side of 'The Bachelor'

A scripted look at the drama that goes on behind the scenes at a reality TV dating show, UnREAL, premiering Monday night on Lifetime, will draw you in even if you don’t watch the shows it’s clearly based on: The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. I should know — you couldn’t pay me to watch The Bachelor, and I get paid to watch TV.

But UnREAL works, for both fans of that ABC franchise, and for skeptics who scoff at its tawdriness. Created by Marti Noxon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Mad Men) and Sarah Gertrude Shapiro (a former producer for The Bachelor), UnREAL centers around Rachel Goldberg (Roswell’s Shiri Appleby), a producer for Everlasting, a meticulously reimagined version of the Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise.

Rachel wears a “This Is What a Feminist Looks Like” T-shirt, probably to remind herself she used to be a respectable women’s studies scholar before selling her soul to network TV. We’re told early on that Rachel is valued for her ability to “get the best quotes, and has killer instincts for drama” in producing the trumped-up conflicts and cat fights that give Everlasting its GIF-worthy pop-culture currency. But Rachel works for executive producer Quinn King, an imperious shark playing with bristling intelligence by House of Cards’s Constance Zimmer. Zimmer fills Quinn with such simultaneous mastery of her dubious craft and contempt for everyone around her (including herself), she can leave you breathless.

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Together, Rachel and Quinn manipulate the bevy of young women vying for the attention of a charmingly cynical bachelor figure, Adam, played by Freddie Stroma. Working from initial filmed interviews of the girls interacting with Freddie, the producers shape the season, labeling their contestants: They need a villain, they need women who’ll appear needy or nuts, they need a token black woman who’ll be — as one of the black contestants herself defines it — “some ratchet hoochie.”

UnREAL viewers who also follow The Bachelor/Bachelorette will enjoy seeing the dramatization of off-camera machinations smart fans know about already, as Rachel scrambles to arrange feuds, blow-ups, and romantic encounters approaching something akin to sincere romantic sentiments toward Adam — or as Quinn calls this bachelor, “our show pony.” And Bachelor/Bachelorette-haters can find pleasure in having their conviction confirmed that the shows are conscience-free cesspools of contrived coercion. “All you care about is this hideous, soul-sucking show,” one contestant spits at a producer. The sad thing — but also the thing that makes this show so compelling — is that the contestants care so much about winning this hideous, spirit-killing show. It’s that paradox that gives UnREAL its true soul.

UnREAL airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on Lifetime.