A&E announces Southie-based reality show
We got glimpses of it in Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed,’’ Clint Eastwood’s “Mystic River,’’ and Ben Affleck’s “Gone Baby Gone,’’ but South Boston is about to get a TV show of its very own. A&E announced Wednesday that it has picked up “Southie Rules,’’ a reality series that will track “one wicked-stubborn native South Boston family’’ as they deal with the gentrification of their neighborhood. The show, which begins production immediately, is the brainchild of the Somerville-based Powderhouse Productions and Magilla Entertainment, which has had a hand in such fine shows as “The Rachel Zoe Project,’’ “Moonshiners,’’ “Chopped,’’ and “Swamp People.’’ The Southie clan, an actual family, lives in a triple-decker and wages “a daily turf war against the yuppies that are overrunning their territory.’’ The network isn’t identifying the family, but we know the show will focus on Leah Lentini Winters, a probation officer, her mom, Camille Niedzwiecki, who lives on the floor above with Leah’s dad, Walter, and Leah’s brother, Matty, who lives on the middle floor with Jen, the mother of his child. According to an A&E press release, “these ‘Southies’ will stop at nothing to protect their way of life from the occupation — that is, if they don’t kill each other first.’’ Maureen Dahill, a lifelong resident of South Boston who writes the CaughtinSouthie.com blog, said she went to a neighborhood meeting the other night and Leah was there. “She spoke and someone was there with a handheld camera,’’ Dahill said. “I wonder if she would have spoken if there wasn’t a camera there.’’ Asked if the TV show could be good for Southie, Dahill sounds skeptical. “No one knows how we’ll be portrayed,’’ she said, “but my gut says it’s not going to be positive.’’
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