In 1868, the developer William A. Engeman purchased, for twenty thousand dollars, several hundred acres between Manhattan Beach and Coney Island. He built a bathing pavilion, and named the area Brighton Beach, for the English seaside resort. A visitor could bet on horse races, gawk at albinos, or attend ragtime shows at “the handsomest seaside theater in the world.” By the nineteen-seventies, the neighborhood had become heavily Russian, and, like Chinatown and Curry Hill, “Little Odessa” was as much a sentimental construct as a place. “Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach, mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth,” Edward Norton’s character says in Spike Lee’s film “25th Hour.” A couple of weeks ago, the producers of “Brighton Beach,” a reality show in the making, posted on their Facebook page a picture of a klatsch of fur-clad women. “Classic BB—babushkas chillin’ on skameyechkas,” the caption read. One of the prospective show’s 3,954 fans wrote, “Blyat, I’m SO EXCITED for this.”

The model here, you will have guessed, is MTV’s “Jersey Shore.” The way the producers—Elina Miller, a Minsk-born twenty-five-year-old, and Alina Dizik, a twenty-six-year-old from Kharkov, Ukraine—tell it, they were at dinner a few months ago when it occurred to them “how great Russians would be for a show like this.” Miller came to the United States in 1989; Dizik in 1990. They met as teen-agers in Chicago. (Miller knows Christine Mahin, a third producer, from working with her on the A&E show “Paranormal State.”) To find their Kuklas and Maxims, the producers have been holding casting calls: at Club Passion in Ocean Parkway, at Petergof restaurant in Chicago. They are looking for certain archetypes: “a very straightforward ethnic Russian who’s proud of the motherland,” a Russian Jew, someone from the Caucasus. “We want to, in some way, create a microcosm of the former Soviet Union in the house,” Miller said the other day at Tatiana, a Russian restaurant on the Brighton Beach boardwalk. Gorbachev may not have anticipated the glasnost of the confessional booth.

The producers do not yet have a deal to make the show, but, so far, they have received hundreds of audition videos. “Yesterday someone posted a twenty-two-minute-long tape,” Dizik said. “He was showing off his Russian motorcycle, and his mom kept interrupting. He went downstairs to show us his dad, and his dad’s like, ‘Get the fuck out of here.’ Then he drove to his grandparents’ house, and they tried to sneak candy into his pockets.”

Vodka and weight lifting will remain important themes in “Brighton Beach,” but, according to the producers, the show will differ from “Jersey Shore” in significant ways. “First of all, there’s Rushlish,” Miller said. “For example, in Russia, there’s no word for ‘parking.’ So you just conjugate it in Russian—‘Gde ti zaparkoval machinu?’ ” She continued, “Then there’s ‘Vassya,’ the diminutive of Vassily, which guys call each other instead of ‘bro’ or ‘dude.’ ” Russians, the producers said, put a lot of stickers on their cars. They bring cash to weddings, not blenders. “A lot of the people we’ve seen have two unrelated jobs, like an optometrist and a d.j.,” Dizik said.

A waitress arrived with pelmeni and a salad of tomatoes, radishes, and dill. Miller’s iPhone, protected by a Burberry-patterned plaid case, rang. Miller answered it and hit the speakerphone button, which seemed a very reality-TV thing to do. It was Christine Mahin, the show’s other producer.

“You have to get the pickled watermelon,” Mahin, who was stuck at her day job, said. “Elina, what was the word you taught me yesterday?”

“Russki,” Miller replied. “That’s the Russian equivalent of ‘guido.’ ”

The waitress returned to the table. “Who are you talking to?” she said, in Russian. “Get off the phone and eat.”

Miller and Dizik heeded her instructions, and started talking about how to decorate the house in “Brighton Beach.” “A lot of Russian homes are very modern—not, like, Design Within Reach modern but Euro-doesn’t-really-go-well-together modern,” Dizik said. “In my mom’s house there’s a circular couch.” The family-planning policies of the former Soviet Union, Dizik pointed out, promised a high-drama environment: “Put a bunch of only children together in a room, and everyone thinks they’re the most important.”

After sharing khachapuri, a Georgian cheese pie, the producers left the restaurant through a long hall decorated with pictures of celebrities and dignitaries. Miller turned to Dizik and said, “Someday they’re going to have pictures of us.” ♦