Many of the producers who worked on The Osbournes had come from the sitcom world, and transferred that experience to portraying this real-life family.<\/p>\n
“When you watch the intro credit sequence, it feels very like The Partridge Family or Father Knows Best,” said Dr Brandy Monk-Payton, an assistant communication and media professor and television researcher at Fordham University.<\/p>\n
Ozzy played the part of the “loveable buffoon”, Dr Monk-Payton said, with The Osbournes segment producer Henriette Mantel describing the middle-age rocker as “Ward Cleaver from Leave It To Beaver on acid”.<\/p>\n
The approximately 20-minute episodes captured silly antics, like the time Sharon threw a baked ham over the fence to retaliate against a loud neighbour; their rock-and-roll lifestyle, like Ozzy rehearsing for a world tour; as well as slapstick family frustrations, like Ozzy’s repeated struggles with tripping over the dog bowl.<\/p>\n
“It was a normal family, but it was wild and it was just crazy,” Ms Mantel told the BBC. And what came through on screen is that “they truly loved each other”.<\/p>\n
In that sitcom set-up, Kelly and Jack fulfilled the roles of a squabbling brother and sister, executive producer Jeff Stilson told the BBC, while Sharon was “the mom trying to hold it all together”.<\/p>\n
In many ways a typical dad, Ms Mantel recalled that “Ozzy just wanted to… lay on the sofa and watch the History Channel”.<\/p>\n
That tension between the familiar and the unfamiliar is exactly what draws in reality TV viewers, according to Dr Danielle Lindemann, a professor of sociology at Lehigh University and the author of True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us.<\/p>\n
“We want to see the outrageous, the zany, but at the same time, we don’t want it to be so removed from our lives that we can’t relate at all,” she said.<\/p>\n
According to MTV, The Osbournes was its highest-rated show when it aired. The second season’s premier in late 2002 drew 6.6 million viewers \u2013 up 84% from the first season, Billboard reported at the time, citing the network. <\/p>\n
The success of this new format paved the way for shows like Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica, which premiered in 2003, Keeping Up With the Kardashians in 2007 and Bravo’s many Real Housewives properties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many of the producers who worked on The Osbournes had come from the sitcom world, and transferred that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-294656","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114922531232432864","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}