Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness, the father of heavy metal music and… reality TV trailblazer?
The Black Sabbath music legend died on July 22, aged 76, prompting fans to take a trip down memory lane to an era of the singer’s career that accidentally changed the shape of TV forever.
The year was 2002 – Ozzy was 30 years into a wildly successful music career, 20 years into his marriage with Sharon, and ready to offer his eager fanbase a peek through the velvet curtain.
Thus, MTV’s reality show The Osbournes was born, featuring the rock ‘n’ roll icon, his wife-turned-OG momager Sharon (who launched her own TV career from its success) and their two children, Kelly and Jack.
What ensued was an unfiltered glimpse into the messy lives of this British music power couple, from high-profile feuds and a cancer diagnosis to the even higher stakes times, like Ozzy accusing ‘someone’ of stealing his beers (gasp, shock, horror).
So, what exactly was it about The Osbournes that captured the heart of the globe – and how did it define the genre forever?
One of the ‘greatest reality shows ever made’
Long before anyone was keeping up with the Kardashians, the people yearned to watch Ozzy go about his life in the most baffling and bizarre way possible.
From 2002 to 2005, The Osbournes was a staple in households everywhere, with some moments staying with fans over 20 years later.
For the uninitiated, getting a taste of just how mad this show is offers our first explanation for its enduring legacy.
Like the time Ozzy bowed at the altar of the Chipotle burrito in the same way one might while being blessed by the Pope at the Vatican.
What makes this scene even more treasured is the consistent thread of Ozzy just really loving a burrito.
You can never say he wasn’t a man of the people.
As eloquently put by Sharon during one episode while Ozzy chows down on the delicious Mexican cuisine: ‘Your father can’t eat one burrito, he has to have 900 burritos’ – cue rabid burrito montage.
Or when Ozzy completely crashed out when he wasn’t able to change the weather channel on the TV.
‘I’m very simple man, you’ve got to have like computer knowledge to turn the f***ing TV on and off. I press one button and the shower starts, I’m like “What is this? Where am I man?” The nightmare continues. The nightmare in Beverly Hills.’
Who among us hasn’t totally unravelled after one too many technological failures?
How to watch every series of The Osbournes for free in the UK
UK viewers are in luck as all four seasons of The Osbournes (each consisting of 10 episodes) are available to stream for free on Plex TV.
You can watch here.
Those seeking an alternate option can find all four seasons on Amazon Prime Video.
The show is chock-full of moments like this. Seriously.
Who can forget Sharon showing Ozzy the new bubble effect for his concert?
‘Bubbles! Oh, come on, Sharon!” he shouted. “I’m f***ing Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of f***ing Darkness. Evil! Evil! What’s f***ing evil about a butt-load of f***ing bubbles!?’ he eloquently declared.
We even found out some insider music tea, like the physical scuffle between Kelly and Jack after she found out that her brother had danced with her arch nemesis, Christina Aguilera.
Other highlights? Ozzy turning against his dog after they peed on the carpet, calling it a ‘f***king part of Bin Laden’s gang’. Or when he shouted at the ocean after the tide extinguished his carefully-crafted campfire.
Balancing the humour, the show also offered some more poignant moments, such as in season two when Sharon allowed cameras to follow her cancer treatment.
It might have brought light-hearted laughs with plenty of outlandish moments, but The Osbournes is widely regarded as one of the best reality TV shows ever made, and a pioneering one at that.
The Kardashians ‘may not exist’ without The Osbournes
The Osbournes was cemented as MTV’s highest-rated TV show while it aired, raking in between six to eight million viewers per episode and landing the Emmy for outstanding reality TV programme.
‘It was a ginormous global hit. I remember sitting with Sharon having a meal, and we were both in disbelief that they were on the cover of every magazine,’ MTV’s Van Toffler told Variety in a recent interview.
He described it as ‘unlike anything else that was on TV’ at the time, and he wasn’t wrong.
After the sheer success of the first season, the Osbournes managed to secure an eye-watering $20million (£14.7m) for the next two seasons, although, per the New York Post from 2002, Sharon teased ‘the real figures are more’.
As for the approach to filming, in 2002, co-executive producer Jeff Stilson told RN Breakfast: ‘We are often compared to Survivor and Big Brother, but we are not like those shows.
‘That’s the family, but for every 500 minutes of footage that we shoot, we use one minute. We are a comedy… We are structuring our show so it feels more like a sitcom.’
What made the show so special, as Van Toffler explained, was that, contrary to the menacing persona Black Sabbath’s Ozzy had exuded to the world, The Osbournes’ Ozzy seemed like a slightly feral teddy bear.
‘He was lovable, and he was so devoted and loving of Sharon and the children and something people wouldn’t expect. Devoted dad and husband,’ Van Toffler added.
Ozzy Osbourne’s biographer tells Metro the unexpected impact of The Osbournes
In an exclusive column for Metro, Ozzy’s 2002 biographer Sue Crawford discusses the rocker’s legacy.
The Osbournes was the series that would change the face of fly-on-the-wall television forever.
Before the Kardashians came The Osbournes, the docu-soap that made stars of heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne, his wife Sharon and their children Kelly and Jack.
The show was a revelation – showing the Prince of Darkness as he’d never been seen before.
For while almost every other utterance was a swearword, in every other respect the wildest man in rock appeared every inch the archetypal sit-com dad – 53 years of age, genial, flustered and completely baffled by his family and the modern world.
The show literally transformed Ozzy’s life. He was already a legend in the world of rock, selling more than 100 million albums as the lead singer of Black Sabbath and as a hugely successful solo artist.
But the Osbournes introduced him to a whole new audience, who had not been witness to his excesses in the 1970s and ‘80s. And his newfound fame even saw him invited to perform for the Queen at her Golden Jubilee Pop Concert at Buckingham Palace.
Meanwhile, another producer, Sue Kolinsky, told the Post: ‘He was so funny, and he had no idea how funny he was.
‘He and the family were the ones who really put reality TV on the map. I believe the reason why the show was so successful was because they really were a loving family,’ she noted.
This format would soon prove the foundation of Paris Hilton’s Simple Life in 2003 and, eventually, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, which launched in 2007 – becoming a reality TV blueprint to this day.
The Osbournes ‘made Ozzy feel like a lab rat’
Unfortunately, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.
In an interview with Metal Hammer in 2022, Ozzy revealed he felt like he was a ‘laboratory rat’ during the three years he was on the show.
‘I thought it was gonna be a piece of cake. But you have a camera crew living in your house for three years and see how you feel at the end of it. You feel like a f***ing laboratory rat.
‘It got to the point where I was falling apart emotionally. You can’t f***ing relax. It doesn’t matter where you go for a piss; you’re paranoid there’s a camera in there. But I’m not ashamed of it. It was a big hit,’ he said.
At the time, he shared a no when asked if he would do it again, saying: ‘It’s now Kardashianville. The world’s changed, man.’
Meanwhile, in a chat with the Daily Record in 2009, Sharon admitted: ‘As Ozzy will tell you, the three years that we were filming, Ozzy was stoned the whole time. He wasn’t sober for one day.’
Despite all this, up until last year, there was consistent chatter that the Osbournes would be returning to reality TV, this time for a 10-part docu-series on the BBC.
The broadcaster announced Home to Roost in 2022, which would track the famous family’s ‘attempt to restart their lives in rural Buckinghamshire’ after decades in Los Angeles.
Following Ozzy’s death, the fate of this show, which was already facing stumbling blocks, remains unclear.
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