Seacrest Brings Show on L.A.'s Persian Community to Bravo

Offering what sounds like a Persian version of Jersey Shore meeting the Real Housewives franchise, Bravo announced Wednesday that it will develop the Ryan Seacrest Productions reality series Shahs of Sunset.

"The Persian-American community in Los Angeles is a perfect fit for Bravo's next great docu-series. The group of friends featured in our show are colorful, affluent, and fun," Andy Cohen, Bravo's executive vice president of original programming, said in a statement.  "Ryan and his team understand what our viewers want to see and when they brought us this group we responded immediately. There's not a show like it on TV."

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The network announcement says the series will follow a group of young Persian-American friends who juggle living and working in L.A. with the demands of their families and traditions. Shahs of Sunset — its tentative title — will range from shopping sprees on Rodeo Drive to family feasts at home.

"The series will offer rich characters and relatable story lines about everyday life — love, work, friendship and family — steeped in a diverse culture, which is wildly entertaining and fun," Ryan Seacrest, who produces Keeping Up With the Kardashians and its three spin-offs,  promised in a statement of his own.

On Seacrest's radio show Wednesday, Cohen talked about how "if you live in L.A,  you know that the Persian-American community is really strong. It's really family-oriented. It's really affluent. This is a really cool, fun, funny group of people you brought to us, Ryan, and I'm hoping that this is going to be our next big docu-series, and something that we're going to be doing for a while!"

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Added Seacrest: "These men and women are hysterical. They grew up together, and are living in Southern California, and they're trying to balance their social lives and work lives. Some of them are hot, and some of them are not so hot, but funny."

Cohen, who also hosts Watch What Happens: Live, declined to commit to when we might see the series, though.

Last year, Jersey Shore producers said they were intending to do a spin-off called The Persian Version, set around Los Angeles — which some call Tehrangeles because an estimated 700,000-plus Persians live there now (many of whom left Iran in 1979 when Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was deposed).