The death of Ozzy Osbourne, the legendary metal singer and frontman of Black Sabbath, has brought with it a slew of loving tributes. His passing came mere weeks after Sabbath filmed an already-iconic farewell gig, which offered a loud and proud reminder of his musical heritage. It’s a proud legacy to leave behind, one that will be remembered fondly. His status as one of the oft-unspoken kings of modern reality TV on MTV’s “The Osbournes” may inspire fewer glowing headlines, but it’s a crucial part of Ozzy lore that deserves its time in the spotlight.
Without Ozzy, not only wouldn’t we have rock music as we know it, but modern reality programming.
“The Osbournes” ran for four seasons on MTV from 2002 to 2005 and was a ratings smash for the network at a time when it had not yet fully given into the allure of reality TV. At the time, the announcement that Ozzy Osbourne would be letting cameras into his home alongside his wife and manager Sharon and two of their kids was seen as a sign of his cultural decline. Reality shows were mostly focused on regular people living together or competing against one another, like with MTV’s own legendary series “The Real World.” The idea of someone as familiar as Ozzy doing it, someone who was once viewed as too dangerous for the mainstream, was viewed as indignant to his legacy. The Osbournes certainly had the last laugh.
The setup was simple. Ozzy, Sharon and teenagers Kelly and Jack (older sibling Aimee declined to appear on-camera) move into their swanky new Beverly Hills home and shenanigans ensue. The kids squabble, there’s a feud with the neighbors, the dogs poo everywhere. It was all typical sitcom fare, but with the profane no-f—ks-given attitude of a rock legend. Every third or fourth word was a swear. Kelly and Jack were using fake IDs to get into clubs on the Sunset Strip. And through it all, Ozzy, the man who used to bite birds’ heads off, was the long-suffering patriarch. He just wanted to watch TV, walk the dogs and chill out. “I love you all,” he told his family in the premiere. “I love you more than life itself. But you’re all f—ing mad.”
The audience loved it. It became the highest-rated program in MTV history at the time. Ozzy later admitted that he was stoned throughout most of the show’s production, perhaps the least surprising revelation in reality TV history, but his grouchy old man wit made him hugely appealing. Sharon was the one running the ship, but Ozzy was still the captain with his no-nonsense attitude and one-liners. He was a loving father with zero tolerance for BS. In moments where the producers clearly stepped in to add some drama, Ozzy’s disdain for the process was extremely entertaining. One episode included a dog therapist subplot as a solution for their incessant pooing, to which Ozzy protested, “You don’t need to hire a dog therapist. You just need to wake up at 7am and open the f—ing door.”
The series documented some major life events, such as Sharon’s cancer diagnosis and Ozzy’s traumatic accident in a quad bike crash, as well as the impact of fame on the lives of the teens. But what fans stuck around for were the mundane moments. It felt radical and oddly comforting to see that the stars are just like us. Watching Ozzy complain about modern technology as he tried to use his new TV didn’t spoil the myth of his metal persona; it enhanced it.
The idea of celebrities doing reality TV now is extremely boring. Everyone does it now, from A-List to Z. A year after “The Osbournes” premiered, MTV launched “Newlyweds” and filled up their programming block with shows about famous people being wacky in their mansions. E! followed suit and eventually launched “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” another series focused on the domesticity of a Los Angeles family. The most watched and discussed reality shows of our time are cut from the cloth of “The Osbournes”: that combination of money and mundanity, of shouting matches and familial cheer, where plot points are minor but emotions are high.
The family has expressed mixed opinions on “The Osbournes” as a whole, with Jack detailing the impact it had on his mental health and Kelly noting how unprepared they were for it all. The show ended not because ratings fell but because the “level of success that TV show got us was too much,” Ozzy told NME in 2020. Certainly, it made them megastars in a whole new way. Sharon became a talk show host. Kelly launched a brief singing career and duetted with her father (which earned him his first-ever Number One hit in his native UK.) Other shows and experiences in the reality world would follow, but “The Osbournes” would never be surpassed.
Becoming a reality TV pioneer is a divisive legacy and certainly not comparable to his decades’ long trailblazing music career that influenced everyone from Metallica to Faith No More to Yungblood. Certainly, some of “The Osbournes” is tough to watch back now, knowing how tough it was for the family to make and how inebriated Ozzy was. Ozzy Osbourne was larger than life on stage, but “The Osbournes” let him be a regular guy from Birmingham whose normalcy and humor made him a national treasure. Many followed in his footsteps on stage and screen but the original endures for a reason. Perhaps the reality stars of now should also pay tribute to Ozzy. Just leave the birds alone.
