The Genial Voyeurism of the Japanese Reality Show "Terrace House" www.newyorker.com

The episodes, calm as Quaker meetings, drift along at a naturalistic pace. Three men and three women move into an elegant pad for a spell, while otherwise conducting their lives as usual. The members of the cast are above average in their camera-readiness and their civility, and in no other discernible way. If the producers massage their interactions with an eye toward creating conflict, they do so with the subtlest hand the genre has ever seen.