Gossip Girl

Not having ITV2 has meant missing out on one of the biggest TV phenomena of the year – Gossip Girl. Magazines are inundated with pictures of Blake Lively and Leighton Meester, hailing them as the new best-dressed (personally I can’t see it – they just seem like two pretty-ish girls with ok stylists). And hardly a day goes by when Perez doesn’t pay homage to the sparkly-eyed Chace Crawford. So feeling left out and worried that I was no longer keeping up (even Drew Barrymore is on the act – she was spotted kissing actor Ed Westwick recently), I went out and bought the box set in an attempt to see what all the fuss is about.

Gossip Girl is set amongst the privileged kids of the upper-East side (think Cruel Intentions) and the characters are so rich that they make the OC gang look like they’re from the wrong side of the tracks. I think they’re supposed to be about sixteen or seventeen but everybody knows that TV teenagers are unlike real teenagers in pretty much every way so we won’t gripe about how they’re played by twenty-somethings, seem really self-aware, etc. Blake Lively and Leighton Meester as Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf are the queen bees of their posh school and the rest of the show’s relationships revolve around these two spoilt brats. Lively and Meester have an onscreen charisma that is lacking in the paparazzi shots that appear on Vogue.com incessantly, but the style icon status still seems undeserved. Blair is the primmer of the two and there are lots of pearls, updos and classy dresses. Serena meanwhile favours a more bohemian look – so Sienna circa 2004.

By far the best dressed is Chuck Bass, played by Drew’s buddy Ed Westwick. Chuck wears spiffing suits with cheeky bow ties and high top sneakers and is rarely seen without his trademark silk scarf. He is the bad boy of the show, which actually means that he is a total pervert. I’m all for bad boys but Chuck goes slightly too far when he tries to date rape 14-year-old Jenny but I must admit that I still fancy him. I also sort of fancy Rufus Humphrey, the faded rock star dad of Dan and Jenny. Everybody looks down on poor old Rufus because he’s kind of arty and used to be in a band but where I come from that’s really cool. This upper-East side bunch is way too harsh and the gallivanting Mrs. Humphrey just doesn’t deserve him. He used to have a thing with Serena’s mom and now Serena is dating his son so there are lots of parallels at play. I hate it when TV shows do that – it would be really creepy to think of some big van der Woodsen/Humphrey step family.

Anyway, I am way too old for all of this and I know that I should be watching Gemma Arterton in Tess of the D’Urbervilles or something but Gossip Girl is a guilty pleasure and here’s hoping that RTE will have the good sense to eventually pick it up.


Bad Boy Chuck Bass