City slickers versus country dudes

Sweet home Alabama

Where the skies are so blue

Sweet Home Alabama

Lord, I’m coming home to you’

— Lynyrd Skynyrd

Alabama may not be home to all of the 21 people on the latest reality television show to hit the airwaves, but the title of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 1974 hit “Sweet Home Alabama” lends its name to the eight-episode adventure.

One reason for Five Towns residents to watch is to see Woodmere’s David ‘Cheekz’ Weeks as one of the 10 city guys who go up against 10 country guys to vie for the affections of native Alabaman Devin Grissom. The show premiers on July 14 at 9 p.m. on CMT.

Weeks, 29, a professional model, recently came back to the Five Towns from living in New York City to care for his mother. The class of 2000 graduate of Hewlett High School earned a liberal arts and science degree at Nassau Community College to become a teacher and possibly a coach – the 6-foot, 170-pound Weeks played basketball in high school. He has been modeling doing prints ads and catalogs.

“I modeled once when I was fifteen, I got away from it,” said Weeks, who obtained the reality gig through an interview over Skype. “In five minutes I was guaranteed that I was perfect for it.”

A perfect fit that comes from being a genuine New Yorker, according to Andrew Glassman, who runs Glassman Media, the Los Angeles-based production company that produced the show.

“Before I got into reality TV, I was a news reporter in New York City and Long

Island, I spent a lot of time on Long Island and David is authentic, a person you only meet in the city or on Long Island and he doesn’t mind being different,” said Glassman, who also executive produced “Sweet Home Alabama.”

That authenticity is what Glassman was seeking for a show that takes place in what can be described as an antebellum-style house on the beach in Mobile, Alabama. “I knew he would be way, way out of his element in the Deep South in Alabama,” he said.

Weeks might not have been near his hometown Mets, but he said the experience was incredible and not at all what he expected. “I expected more clashing of personalities, I didn’t expect the girl to be as easy going, cool and collected and calm as she was,” Weeks said. “She was open minded, she was really entertaining and she gave the guys a fair chance.”

And it is what happens in front of the camera that interests Glassman, who has produced a few reality hits, including “Average Joe” on NBC. “My favorite part is being a cameraman, to look through the lens and see things that are unpredictable,” said Glassman, who knows many New Yorkers are not regular viewers of CMT, but hopes this series makes them tune in. “I couldn’t be more proud of the characters and the authenticity of it.”

That there has been other reality television shows with similar premises, Glassman thinks that people should watch, because of the rivalry between the two distinct cultures, the choices that must be made and there is romance.

“I think it’s a unique and different perspective with people from different walks of life,” said Aaron Long, who served as a producer.

He would do something like this again, Weeks said, and shared how he wooed Grissom.“I tried to tell her it would be a different life in the city and she would experience something she has never seen before.”