NEW YORK (MTV) - Ever wonder what it's like to live with
Ozzy Osbourne? MTV viewers will find out beginning March 5 (10:30 p.m.), when the network premieres what MTV Entertainment President Brian Graden described as "America's first reality sitcom."
Speaking to the Television Critics Association on Monday (Jan. 14) in Pasadena, Calif., Graden introduced clips from The Osbournes, a new series following the lives of heavy metal icon Osbourne, his manager wife Sharon, and two of their three teenage kids, Kelly, 17, and Jack, 16.
Cameras have followed the family 24/7 (except Sundays) since summer's successful Ozzfest tour, moving with them into a new home?their 24th?last fall, with access to every room but the bathrooms and master bedroom. Tape continued to roll for future episodes as the Osbournes discussed their life-in-a-fishbowl experience.
"I just thought America needed to see what a normal family was really like," said Sharon, noting that the positive reception toward Ozzy's episode of MTV's Cribs was a deciding factor in agreeing to do the show. "What you see on that program is what went down ?, none of it is scripted," said Ozzy. "There is the good, the bad, and the ugly in this? I didn't want to tidy up the stuff for this show. What you see is what you get."
You do see the rock star wrestling with a complicated TV remote, Kelly getting a tattoo, and Jack setting the kitchen afire. But you don't get eldest child Aimee, 18, who lives in the home's guest house and isn't participating because, her mom explained, "She's working on her own career as a singer. She didn't want to be involved in this program because she felt that starting a new career ?, she didn't want to be bunched in with all of us lunatics."
The family also weighed in on good neighbors (ex crooner-next-door Pat Boone) and bad (the current folk who've initiated a feud by playing folk music loudly in the wee hours of the morning) and Ozzfest, which Jack described as "heavy metal summer camp." The summer 2002 edition is being booked now, with an eye toward a May 23 kickoff in Europe and a July 10 start in the U.S. Other than Osbourne, no bands have been set.
The metal patriarch's mumbled delivery had one reporter asking Graden if the aging Brit would be close-captioned. (He won't.) But the audio censor is having a field day. "On average, every third word is a bleep," Ozzy admitted.
The Osbournes will run for "at least six or eight episodes, but by the time it airs it may be 10," Graden said later. "We can keep going as long as they're comfortable."
An Ozzie and Harriet this is not.
