‘Real World’ Doesn’t Look Like His World : Commentary: The MTV staple has gone international, with a global gang of seven rooming in a house in London. But they still don’t look like anybody this writer knows.

MTV-- still the hippest channel on the dial--is back with another group of happening kids thrown together in fabulous digs, with time and money to kill, all for your voyeuristic pleasure.

It’s the fourth time around for “The Real World,� a pseudo-documentary with major soap-opera elements.

When the series started in 1992, it was set in New York, then moved to Los Angeles and then to San Francisco. And now, for the first time, it has gone international, with a global gang of seven rooming in a house in London.

Among this season’s cast are a 19-year-old presidential scholar from Portland, Ore., who was named best high school playwright in the country; a 19-year-old woman with Olympic-quality fencing skills; a 24-year-old Oxford grad and musician from Devon, England; and a 22-year-old Australian-born, Paris-based model who has been bopping around Europe since she was 17.

Can I make a confession here?

They don’t sound like anybody I know.

But I think I know why.

Either “The Real World� doesn’t exist, it has passed me by or--and this is my secret hope--it hasn’t been created yet.

It could be I’ve just been watching the wrong channel.

Since I’m on the verge of 39, I guess I shouldn’t be watching MTV in the first place. I should be watching a channel closer in spirit to my own age.

I should be watching VH1.

I figure it’s just a matter of time before someone there creates a “World� I can relate to.

Naturally, things would look a little different.

For starters, the title.

When you hit middle age, the real world doesn’t have the bright-and-shiny connotations of limitless possibilities, freewheeling adventure and romance without end.

Better to call our show “The Weight of the World.�

The cast? A bunch of characters, to be sure.

The way I see it, the group would have to be a bit smaller because, even though you’re supposed to mature as you get older, the reality is your patience is increasingly limited.

And you’ve got all this baggage.

Furniture. Kids. Their toys. Ex-husbands and ex-wives. Extended families. Bills, bills, bills, bills, bills.

That means the dynamics between the cast members would change.

There would be more sputtering than fireworks. A kind of United Nations more than Bowery Bar environment.

When you hit your late 30s and early 40s, all those quirks of personality that seem so fascinating when you’re young--the embryo, perhaps, of some future, life-defining feature--often turn out to be nothing more than annoying obsessions.

So the real action, in all likelihood, would be in the kitchen--with dramatic discussions about who was supposed to do the dishes, the dangers of salt and chipped wine glasses.

But there would be some pluses for the producers:

No expensive wardrobes for style-conscious stars.

Definitely better hours for the crew--considering the job-related necessity for cast members to get up early in the morning and their physical inability to stay up late.

And viewers wouldn’t have to worry about blaring music drowning out important pieces of dialogue since “Weight of the World� stars, if they went out at all, would probably end up in coffee houses, not noisy downtown bars.

And. . . .

On second thought, that “Real World� show sounds mighty appealing.