TV reality show makes me hick

A new reality show has been branded 'bigotry for bucks' - even before hitting TV screens. The idea is to transplant a poor family from America's Deep South to one of the country's poshest cities to see how they cope.

In a real-life twist on 1960s sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies, the family would be paid more than £300,000 to live for a year in a Hollywood mansion. But critics say CBS is planning a demeaning 'hick hunt'.

Criticism by a Democrat senator in Georgia has been followed by a chorus of protests by southern community groups and unions. But the TV network's chairman, Leslie Moonves, said the concept remained a possibility.

In the original series, which ran for nine years, a family from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas ended up in Beverly Hills after oil was found on their land.