30 Rock introduced many fake TV shows — Bitch Hunter, Black Frasier, God Cop, etc. — but only one has been turned into an actual TV show.
In the season two episode, “MILF Island,” the TGS with Tracy Jordan staff becomes obsessed with the reality show MILF Island, which Jack Donaghy describes thusly: “25 super hot moms, 50 eighth grade boys, no rules.” It’s basically the same premise as MILF Manor, a TLC series about “eight confident and strong-minded women [who] leave home for the chance to find love at a paradise destination.” The easy-to-guess twist: they’re trying to find love with each other’s sons (who are not eighth grade boys, phew).
Daniela Neumann, managing director of Spun Gold TV, the London-based production company that created MILF Manor, told the Washington Post that she has never seen that episode, or any episode of 30 Rock. The inspiration for the premise actually has more in common with the Di Grasso family plot from season two of The White Lotus.
It took shape after a divorced colleague went on vacation with his sons and was startled one day to see his son chatting up a woman that he, the father, had enjoyed a conversation with earlier. That, combined with another show they were kicking around about the bond between mothers and sons, gave them the concept for MILF Manor. They shopped the show around to several networks that passed (Neumann declined to reveal which ones) until it landed at TLC, whose executives were delighted.
The White Lotus should film at MILF Manor for season three. As long as Jennifer Coolidge returns.
(Via the Washington Post)