With its first original show, international reaity-TV streamer Hayu is asserting itself as not just a storehouse for American reruns but a force of its own.
Photo: Hayu

If you follow any Bravo-related Instagram accounts, you might have come across the trailer for The Real Housewives of London and gotten excited by the prospect of a new group of rich middle-aged women trashing each other for our entertainment — only this time they all sound like Lisa Vanderpump. Let’s all watch it again together:

All the familiar Housewives signifiers are there: private jets, diamond bracelets, women accusing each other of being low-class liars and terrible friends. Dorinda Medley even makes an appearance! But before any U.S.-based Bravo-heads go marking the August 18 premiere on your calendars, there are some important distinctions to note about this new star in the Housewives universe. As both the president and founder of the Housewives Institute and a resident of Charles III’s kingdom, I’m here to clear up all of your American questions about exactly what the show is and how to watch it.

What’s with that funny logo in the corner of the trailer? Shouldn’t it say Bravo? 
It shouldn’t, and we’ll get to why shortly, but let’s start with the first question. The logo is for Hayu (pronounced like hey you), a streaming service where people outside the U.S. can watch trashy American reality shows. It’s available in 45 markets but has its biggest fan bases in English-speaking countries like Canada, the U.K., Ireland, and Australia, but if you’re in Hong Kong or Andorra, it has you covered. Hayu is home to more than 350 shows and airs all Bravo shows the day after they premiere in the U.S., so basically at the same time as Peacock. It’s also home to shows like Botched and Keeping Up With the Kardashians. When I die, I want my consciousness uploaded to Hayu so I can spend eternity with all of my friends.

The Real Housewives of London is the first original show commissioned by Hayu, which like Bravo is owned by NBCUniversal, but they are separate companies.

If it’s not a Bravo show, how can they call it Real Housewives? 
Like any reality show, Real Housewives is a format and channels regularly sell their formats all around the world. Just like there is a Britain’s Got Talent or a Masked Singer Iceland, the same goes for Real Housewives. That’s how we got The Real Housewives of Melbourne and The Real Housewives of Sydney. While they all bear the mark of Real Housewives, Bravo has nothing to do with any of them, though it did re-air the Australian versions back in the day.

To confuse the issue even further, the sadly paused Real Housewives of Dubai actually was commissioned by Bravo and made in concert with one of its production companies. That means that, to date, it is the only overseas Housewives to be formally sanctioned by the mothership, unlike all the other international editions.

The international Housewives experiment first kicked off in 2011 with the short-lived Real Housewives of Athens, but over the past five years especially there’s been a proliferation of international editions, with reboots of both Sydney and Melbourne as well as new outposts in Amsterdam, Durban, Cape Town, Lagos, and now London. Several of these are available on Hayu but sadly not on Peacock.

But Real Housewives of London is going to air in the U.S. too, right?
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but as of right now there are no plans for it to air either on Bravo or Peacock in the U.S. That said, those of us in the U.K. are used to finding workarounds to view the things that haven’t been released here. With a VPN and a Peacock subscription, I watched every episode of Love Island USA this season, even though it’s still not available in the U.K.

Interesting. Are there other U.K. Housewives installments I “can’t” watch?
There are! The U.K. already has The Real Housewives of Cheshire, set in the rich Liverpool suburb where lots of WAGs (wives and girlfriends of football stars) live. There is also The Real Housewives of Jersey, as in the isle of Jersey not the state of New Jersey. They air on ITVBe, which is sort of like English TLC. While Jersey was canceled after two seasons, Cheshire has run for 18, even though it’s only been on the air since 2015. Still, neither show has really entered into the cultural mainstream, even as the Housewives fandom seems to be growing in the U.K. These are also available on Hayu, a place of many splendors.

So then what makes London so special? 
First of all, as mentioned, it is exclusive to Hayu, which marks a certain coming of age for the streamer. The Housewives fandom really started to take off in the U.K. at the start of the pandemic when Netflix put up the first two seasons of many of the cities. Thanks to some canny marketing from Hayu, it managed to capitalize on that momentum to really get people hooked. With its first original show, Hayu is asserting itself as not just a storehouse for American reruns but a force of its own.

Secondly, London has a different production company than the other British versions, UTAS UK Productions, which is behind the long-running reality hit Made in Chelsea — think The Hills, if they all had posh accents and trust funds. Based just on the trailer, it looks like the production value of RHOL is much more up to the standards that Bravo fans are used to. That connection is underlined by brief appearances from Caroline Stanbury, also from Ladies of London and The Real Housewives of Dubai, and former London resident and Real Housewives of New York City great Dorinda Medley, but it looks like they’re both just stopping by for tea.

Is there anyone else in the cast U.S. Bravo fans might know?
Probably not. Fashion designer Karen Loderick-Peace was on the aforementioned Real Housewives of Jersey and Cheshire and recently relocated to the Big Smoke to go for a more prominent Housewives position. Australian Juliet Mayhew ran a leather-goods brand and now works as an interior designer and event planner. Panthea Parker is Persian and lives in North London (think Alex McCord being in Brooklyn trying to make it in this economy), so that sets her apart from the rest of the crew. Nessie Welschinger is billed as the voice of reason in the group and runs the Chelsea Cake Company, her second career after leaving finance. Amanda Cronin is perhaps the most high-flying of the group, with her own skin-care line that is well regarded among a certain clientele.

The one person U.S. Bravo-heads might know is Juliet Angus, an American expat who was on three seasons of Bravo’s Ladies of London. She shows up a few episodes into the season and she and Amanda apparently have a beef that predates their both being cast on the show. Juliet is the one Amanda tells repeatedly to, “Go back to Paddington,” in the trailer, which is a sick burn. It’s basically saying that she lives near the train station in a bad part of town.

Juliet Angus? Wait, is this just a rebrand of that Ladies of London reboot that was announced earlier this year??
No, that’s something else entirely. Back in May, Bravo announced it was rebooting the show, which was made by BBC Studios and featured a group of Americans living in London and native Britons. It’s unclear if the new show will have the same mix, but the cast is going to be entirely new, so Caroline Stanbury is sadly still without a reality-television berth. A source close to the show says that production is just about to wrap, so it will most likely debut on Bravo in another six months or so.

So what are The Real Housewives of London holding in their opening credits? Teacups? 
Ugh, yes. Maybe a little too on the nose with that one.

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