The Hills

MTV’s The Hills has eyes: lined, shadowed, and mascaraed. They belong to Lauren Conrad, Heidi Montag, Audrina Patridge, and Whitney Port, four young women navigating the City of Angels. Slick and stylish with a hip soundtrack and naturalistic dialogue, The Hills looks and feels like fiction, but the characters are real people going about their actual lives (though producers have acknowledged setting up some of the action). Like Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County—the show that sired it—The Hills has been dubbed “docu-soap.” The idea, per executive producer Tony DiSanto, “was to see if we could do a reality show in the visual language of narrative film.” Adam DiVello, a Laguna Beach alum, created the series.

Photo—MTV