Viewers cold on Aussie 'Jersey Shore'

A reality-based series with a soap opera feel, "The Shire" debuted to a modest 941,000 viewers on Monday night and quickly sparked a barrage of criticism on social media sites and from entertainment writers.

It is modelled on the wildly popular US series "Jersey Shore", which got 7.6 million viewers watching the premiere of its fifth season earlier this year, a 2011-12 cable TV record and one of MTV's most popular series ever.

But one critic of "The Shire" described the show as Australian television's "lobotomy" moment and local mayor Carol Provan said the bronzed, surgically-enhanced cast made for "painful" viewing.

"I couldn't believe it, it was like having root canal work," Provan told the Nine network.

Provan said residents of the Sutherland Shire region, popularly known as The Shire, was still smarting from alcohol-fuelled race riots on Cronulla beach in December 2005 which made world headlines.

"We've still got bruises from what happened there with the riots," she said. "I think the community's very upset to think that the law... allows television crews to come in and denigrate a community. It's just so wrong."

"The Shire" follows the trials and tribulations of a group of tattooed, photogenic twenty-somethings living in southern Sydney.

Its cast includes star-crossed lovers Mitch, a surfer, and sales assistant Gabby; an aspiring rapper Rif Raf who hosts his friends in waterfront opulence (his mother's home); and a raft of botoxed and buxom young women.

A Fox television presenter described it as "one of the most inane, embarrassing, highly offensive pieces of rubbish TV that has been produced, ever".

But others were not writing it off just yet.

"The fact that most people will kick the show doesn't mean much; the 'reality' genre is engineered to create conversation, not adoration," wrote Sydney Morning Herald critic Michael Idato.