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Netflix’s Byron Baes is contrived, trashy and awful. It’s practically a public service | Emma Brockes
The streaming giant has served up a new reality show full of dreadful characters. What better respite from the real world?
I’m not proud of this fact, but over the course of the past 24 hours, and in defiance of a to-do list a mile long, I binged all eight episodes of Byron Baes, Netflix’s “first Australian reality show”. This is, obviously, what you are supposed to do with a show like Byron Baes, which is not a product to be savoured or lingered over. It is wholly contrived, full of horrible characters and premised on an idea of life in which words such as “wellness” play a meaningful role. It is also expertly designed to suck you into the drama and offer you respite from the real problems of the world.
If there’s a squeamish element to watching Byron Baes, it is the knowledge that the show works by encouraging a specific response in audiences that might be summarised as hate therapy. The cast are all young, affluent and deluded to one degree or another, identifying as designers and influencers, and living in a coastal town that was at one time a hippy surfing community. A few years ago, American movie stars began moving in – the location is stunning – and the place became promptly appalling. As an Australian friend told me: “It’s been ruined by Hemsworths and Damons” – after which, the deluge: hordes of crystal-waving, linen-wearing Instagrammers who, inevitably after a few seasons, attracted the attention of Vanity Fair. In 2019, the magazine did a long piece about various eco-entrepreneurs in Byron Bay, one of whom specialised in “ethical bed linens for babies” while another eschewed the US because of its “consumerism”. That piece was the springboard for the show, and here we are.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
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