CBS in a docu-soap lather with ‘Club’

A friend who works in programming for a major cable network recently gave me his theory of what’s behind the burgeoning “docu-soap” genre -- those reality shows that play like scripted dramas, a la MTV’s “Laguna Beach” or CBS’ upcoming “Tuesday Night Book Club.”

He posited that women, who make up the majority of TV viewers, want stories about relationships -- and if they’re with real people, all the better. Men, he added, just want to watch porn.

The porn remark was half in jest; my informal research has demonstrated that some of my male counterparts also enjoy football telecasts. But as ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” proved, prime time’s latest soap format is hooking female viewers in a big way, even as the traditional daytime network warhorses such as “Days of Our Lives” -- which NBC may cancel after 41 years, according to a Variety report last week -- face slow fade-outs.

That CBS, America’s most-watched network, as well as its oldest-skewing, is plunging into the docu-soap sweepstakes this summer is the clearest sign of the genre’s new primacy. “Tuesday Night Book Club,” an eight-episode reality series, has little to do with literature. Instead, seven uncommonly mediagenic Scottsdale, Ariz., women, ages 25 to 46, gather to sip wine and dissect their tangled romantic lives.

“We wanted to tell narrative stories as best we could using real people,” said Tony Marsh, co-executive producer of “Book Club” with business partner Jay Blumenfield. The show premieres June 13 at 10 p.m.

The pair were also behind “Welcome to the Neighborhood,” the controversial reality show about gay and ethnic families vying for a home in a conservative white neighborhood that ABC yanked last year without airing a single episode.

“Book Club” has plenty to make viewers of either sex cringe. There’s a surplus of tearing up and hugging, plus at least one depiction of a “key party,” those wife-swapping events of suburban legend that apparently still exist in some real-life subdivisions. But on its own terms, “Book Club” is entertaining, funny and cathartic as well as a fair indicator of where the unscripted genre seems headed.

Producers don’t like the “docu-soap” label. But it’s the only broadly accepted category devised so far for the subgenre. Generally, docu-soaps try to make the stories of “real people” -- the casting process may weed out anyone with a true claim to normalcy -- as compelling as those of scripted characters.

Many reality devotees include Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Orange County” in the trend along with VH1’s under-the-radar hit “My Fair Brady,” which mix docu-soaps with “celeb reality.” But the prototype is “Laguna Beach,” which tracks the lives of teen Lauren “L.C.” Conrad and friends and has run for two hit seasons on MTV. Spinoff “The Hills” premiered last week, reaching 4.6 million viewers, and was that night’s top show among viewers 12 to 24, according to Nielsen Media Research.

“The goal here was, are there new ways to tell real stories?” said “Laguna Beach” executive producer Tony DiSanto. “Can you tell a real story using the ... techniques of scripted dramas?”

But producers insist that when they say “unscripted,” they mean it. “What’s coming out of people’s mouths is not written,” said DiSanto, adding that what real people say is often more interesting than what a writer could come up with anyway.

That premise applies to “Book Club,” where in the first episode some characters seem underdrawn but others spring brilliantly to life. Among the latter is Jamie, a brooding 25-year-old who’s contemplating ending her marriage with some mentoring from Tina, the brassy, 40-something leader of the group.

The men sometimes come off as uncomprehending slabs of meat and whiskers, problems to be dealt with rather than fully rounded characters. But the early exception is Eddie, a beefy firefighter newly married to gym rat Lynn. At first, the pair are simply the Bickersons.

“You wanna do this by yourself?” Eddie grumbles as they unpack from a move. “Then shut up.”

But the longer one watches this pair, the more understandable the appeal of this kind of programming becomes. At one point, Eddie and Lynn rush their sick bulldog to the vet. The animal swallowed Lynn’s engagement ring, which had been left on a nightstand.

Lynn proposes taking turns monitoring the dog’s stool. Eddie, angry at how casually Lynn treated the ring, isn’t having any of it: “You’re digging through the poop.”

Anyone who’s married can recognize the emotions behind the encounter. The fact that this gem wasn’t dug up in a writers’ room lends resonance to the scene.

As Marsh said, “It’s about relatability ... the idea of real people, involved in real scenes and dilemmas, cuts to a different emotional place.”

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Channel Island runs Mondays in Calendar. Scott Collins’ blog of the same name is at latimes .com/channelisland. E-mail channelisland@latimes.com