PASADENA, Calif. — We've grown accustomed to "reality" shows featuring obnoxious people who can't get along, creating a program that's watchable only in the way that you can't turn your head if you happen upon a gruesome accident.
But on PBS?
"Texas Ranch House" isn't quite Fox's "Unan1mous," but it's too far down that road to avoid comparisons. It's eight hours (tonight-Thursday from 7-9 p.m. on Ch. 7) of people in a thoroughly unpleasant situation acting thoroughly unpleasant toward one another.
It's the latest in a series of "House" programs — "Frontier House," "Manor House," "Colonial House" — that attempt to put modern-day people into the lives of people in the past. In this case, it's a circa-1867 "Texas Ranch House." It's hot. It's dry. It's loaded with unpleasant swarms of flies and unpleasant confrontations.
Ranch foreman Stan Johnston fights with the cook, Ignacio "Nacho" Quiles. Nacho fights with ranch owner Bill Cooke. Bill fights with his wife, Lisa. The people trying to re-create a genuine 1867 experience fight with the people who refuse to play their roles as they ought to.
And everybody complains about everything all the time.
"You're a very small group of people stuck in the middle of nowhere. . . . And if you don't like each other, it's not a very good situation," said Maura Finkelstein, who was supposed to be a servant but insisted on being a cowboy.
(Certainly admirable in a 21st-century woman, but out of place for a 19th-century woman.)
How did she feel about being a maid — the historically accurate role for a woman in 1867?
"I was very angry. I actually thought that I might have the possibility of starting out as a cowboy and not necessarily the maid, so it was a disappointment at first," Finkelstein said.
"I never felt like it was 1867," she added, oblivious to the fact that she helped undercut the whole basis for "Texas Ranch House."
"There was a spectrum of the commitment to playing by the rules. . . . There were several people that were very, very committed to it and remained committed to it," Bill Cooke said. "Others weren't as much on board with that. And it kept things fractured, if you will."
Fractured and unpleasant. The eight hours seem endless.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com