Hall's 'Kept' is no model for a good reality series
How to transcribe the exhalation of a sigh? Would it be spelled ''Huuh"? ''Haah"? ''Hoow"? Because that would be the critical sound effect for this review of ''Kept," a new VH1 reality series that finds model Jerry Hall trolling for her very own boy toy. The sigh shouldn't look like a fall-of-civilization sigh, though, so much as a bored-to-tears sigh with a hint of a yawn about it. It should also look like a mildly disappointed sigh, since this show portraying Mick Jagger's ex-wife as a vamp doesn't offer even a shred of frothy camp.
''Kept," which premieres tomorrow night at 9, is basically a mix of ''The Bachelorette" and ''Manhunt: The Search for America's Most Gorgeous Male Model." Hall presides over a dozen American men who are competing to be kept by her for a year, during which time they'll supposedly live a glamorous Continental life with a salary. In each episode, they perform silly tasks for her -- some, of course, involving bared chests. The idea is that ''you gotta give everything up for Jerry," as one player gushes proudly. And then Hall judges each of them based on whether they can adore her without being creepy.
Naturally, Hall uses her Stones cachet as much as possible, aware that that's the real reason she has the series. We see her dishing with Charlie Watts's daughter and Bill Wyman's wife, and late in tonight's episode her steely assistant, Katy, tells the first loser, ''You can't always get what you want."
Some of the men seem to be genuinely pathetic, gigolos hoping to sell themselves into service. They probably take their roles on ''Kept" seriously enough to believe Hall is actually doing this for company and not just for publicity. They probably think there truly will be a sexual element to the job -- something that's only intimated in the premiere. And, of course, the other men are on ''Kept" for their close-ups, frauds hamming around to get more air time. The star of the latter category is a man who introduces himself to Hall by mimicking Jagger and singing ''Angie" with his own lyrics. They can't say he never tried -- to be a fool.
Hall, whose British accent is as slippery as Madonna's, projects very little personality. She's bland in an older Paris Hilton kind of way. She sometimes tries to make herself into a worldly lady unafraid of her own power, as she delivers comments such as, ''They have a lot to learn, these boys." But her hauteur is unconvincing. It's just a flat performance. Insert sigh here.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. 
