‘Watching any of it made you feel grubby' – the most notorious reality TV families ever
Today sees the debut of The Baldwins, a reality TV show about Alec and Hilaria Baldwin and their seven children. According to TLC, the show will demonstrate 'what life is really like for the Baldwins – chaotic, funny, exhausting and filled with love. Alec and Hilaria's dynamic as a couple will also take centre stage, with moments that showcase their deep partnership as they navigate challenges hand in hand.' Which, given that it is still not long since Alec Baldwin fatally shot Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust, is quite a lot of challenges.
But however you view The Baldwins – either as a moneymaking necessity for a family in trouble, or something less edifying – they now join a long line of other reality show families that have opened themselves up for the public to gawp at. Here are 10 of the most notorious.
Such was the rush for celebrity reality shows in the early 00s that they would give anyone a series. Witness 2004's seven-episode Til Death Do Us Part, in which Baywatch star Carmen Electra prepared for her marriage to Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro. And it was just that. Seating arrangements, location scouting, cake buying; nothing was too mundane for these hellcats. Spoiler alert: the couple filed for divorce less than three years after filming wrapped.
It's important to note that nobody wanted a reality show about Bobby Brown. But he was married to Whitney Houston, and by 2005 she was in such freefall that she had nobody to advise her against it. The resulting show was almost gratuitously unedifying. Watching any of it made you feel grubby. Watching the episode where Brown explains how he helps Houston relieve her constipation, you found yourself actively wishing for an intervention.
The Kardashians have reached such a point of cultural saturation that it is easy to overlook just how weird it is. It's a reality show about a bunch of identical-looking Stepford Wives – trapped inside a loop of only being famous because they've got a show – strutting around a warehouse-sized mansion saying absolutely nothing of note. The patriarch is, retrospectively very clearly, transitioning. Kanye West drifts in and out. There is no identifiable content whatsoever. It's bizarre.
In the US, the channel TLC carved out its own genre of competitive breeding, where your chances of landing a show directly correlated with the number of children you had. Jon and Kate Plus 8 was a good start, but they were soon eclipsed by the Duggar family, who inexplicably had 19 children. That was exploitative enough. The fact that the show was eventually hauled off-air after sexual molestation allegations against the oldest son were revealed just makes it worse.
For a while there, there was no reality TV show Gene Simmons wouldn't enthusiastically consent to. He was on Rock School. He was on Criss Angel Mindfreak. He was on the child trauma psychology show Shrink Rap. And yet his greatest contribution to the medium was Family Jewels, which ran for six years until 2012. A reality show that followed Simmons, his wife, Shannon Tweed, and his two children, it was standard enough reality fare, save for the episodes where Simmons had to take a lie detector test to see if he'd been sleeping around or not.
Whenever there is a change in government, it is inevitable that recently unelected ministers will find themselves scrambling for work. But none have been quite as desperate as Jacob Rees-Mogg, who signed his family up for a reality show the instant he saw the writing on the wall. Meet the Rees-Moggs was an attempt to show Jacob and his clan as a normal family, which is especially hard to do when you live in a mansion full of portraits of yourself and local people keep spray painting the phrase 'Posh Twat' around town.
Sometimes reality shows are deliberately structured to make their subjects look more exciting. In retrospect, Hogan Knows Best – a VH1 series about Hulk Hogan and his family – did the exact opposite. Onscreen they came across as a cartoonishly oversized and bright orange sitcom family, wayward but ultimately protective. Offscreen, Hogan's marriage was deteriorating due to his infidelities (his wife would soon shack up with a 19-year-old) and their son crashed his car while drunk, causing his friend to be in a vegetative state.
Arguably a family born for reality TV, the Wahlbergs are a clan of intensely high-frequency roughneck Bostonians, comprising one Hollywood actor, one member of New Kids on the Block and an array of peripheral biological and honorary Wahlbergs including Jenny McCarthy and the guy they based Drama from Entourage on. Together, of course, they decide to start a burger franchise. The whole thing is really a shameless commercial, but an entertaining one nonetheless.
Future historians will one day write books about Totally Scott-Lee, a one-off 2005 reality series about the attempts of former Steps member Lisa Scott-Lee to launch a solo career. This was a show with real stakes, since Scott-Lee – flanked by her brother and husband – made the early wrongheaded decision to announce that she would quit the business if her first single didn't go Top 10. Spoiler: it did not go Top 10. The moment she discovered this remains one of the most compelling of the entire genre.
How could it be anything but? Aside from Anna Nicole Smith's show, which was altogether more ugly and exploitative, The Osbournes is the original and best reality TV show. Essentially a live-action Simpsons, if Homer had also been a world-renowned rockstar, it was a full-tilt bananas show about a dysfunctional (but unquestionably loving) family. The show made stars of every member, and every reality show that followed owes it a great debt.
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Scotsman
3 hours ago
- Scotsman
11 of your favourite old fizzy drinks which were discontinued
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Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Virgins reveal REAL life impact of sharing their 'embarrassing' truth on TLC show
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Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Daily Mail
1000lb Sisters star Tammy Slaton unveils astonishing new look after 500lb weight loss and major surgery
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Amy had explained at the time that both she and her sister were awaiting to get approval to have gastric bypass surgery and needed to find out how much they weighed. 'We haven't been able to find a scale to weigh us and we heard that you might be able to help us,' Tammy added. Six years earlier, Amy had weighed 406 while Tammy was 605 - which garnered emotional responses from both of the reality stars. 'Seeing that number on the scale, it just made my heart drop,' Amy said in a confessional. 'This is the most I've ever weighed.' It was then Tammy's turn and she admitted, 'I did not want to get onto that scale. Honestly, I just wanted to leave.' Upon seeing 605 flash onto the small screen, Tammy looked over at her sister before breaking down in tears. 'The size that I am right now didn't happen overnight. It's my fault that I'm this size,' she said. And in 2025, Amy stepped on the scale once again - with her transformed weight showing 249lbs. 'We haven't been able to find a scale to weigh us and we heard that you might be able to help us,' Tammy added Upon seeing 605 flash onto the small screen, Tammy looked over at her sister before breaking down in tears The star was quiet at first, taking in the results and admitted to her sister - as well as other siblings Amanda and Chris - that she was in 'shock' The star was quiet at first, taking in the results and admitted to her sister - as well as other siblings Amanda and Chris - that she was in 'shock.' Amy later told Tammy that while recently at the junkyard once again, she was struggling through emotions of both 'happiness' and 'pain' due to gaining back some weight. But Tammy offered support to her sister and pointed out, 'You still lost 150lbs. That's great. Like, you still should be proud of yourself. And you can always get back on track.' In the new snippet, Tammy's current weight was revealed to be 216lbs. Back in April, she shared that she had dropped 500lbs after being at her highest weight of 725lbs on the season seven premiere of the TLC show. 'When I was at my heaviest, I was 700 plus lbs. Right now, I'm weighing in at 238. Everybody keeps telling me I'm looking smaller than Amy. That's kind of hard to believe,' she said. Last week, it was revealed that Tammy had finally undergone skin removal surgery as she opened up in a new interview. The TV personality shared that she was approved for the long-awaited surgery amid her incredible weight loss journey. She opened up about the 'overwhelming' emotions she felt after 'working really hard' over the past six years to drop the weight to be able to have the eight-hour procedure. She told People: 'After six years and losing over 500 pounds, I was finally approved for surgery. I was just overwhelmed with excitement. 'I worked really hard for this, and now it's here. I'm pretty sure it was noticeable on my face how immediately shocked and then overwhelmed with joy I was.' Tammy traveled to Pittsburgh for her skin removal with plastic surgeon Dr. J. Peter Rubin at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the reality of the procedure hit her the night before. She said: 'I was really nervous for the skin removal surgery because I was really just kind of afraid of how I'm gonna feel looking at myself without the belly there. 'The night before my surgery, I was, like, seriously freaking terrified. I was even more nervous about having skin removal surgery than I was for the [sleeve gastrectomy] surgery because they're actually cutting the whole belly!' Tammy underwent her skin removal surgery on January 18, and during the 8-hour procedure, doctors removed 'over 15 lbs' of excess skin from her chin, arms and lower stomach. The star's complex surgery was documented on the show and during the season finale, all of her siblings were in awe of her transformation and praised her for how far she's come in her weight loss journey. Speaking on the show, after the surgery, Tammy said: 'It feels so weird not having the ball sack hanging off my face and my bat wings are gone too, I look down and there is nothing there in my lap now. 'It's going to take a little while for me to get use to seeing myself like this'. It comes after Tammy revealed in April that she's in new relationship with a woman. In the seventh season of the much-loved TLC series, pansexual Tammy and her sister Amy are seen catching up their fans on their lives. She spoke about her new budding romance in a confessional preview of the series - and admitted she hasn't told her family yet. Tammy said: 'There's something I haven't told my family. Amy's not the only one that's been seeing somebody new. So have I... 'I have been seeing someone for the past couple months and it's going pretty well. The person I'm dating is a woman. So I haven't told my family because my family's gonna have something to say about it.' She added, 'I think my family probably has more opinions than the world has a**holes because they be farting so much.' This is Tammy's first relationship since the death of her husband, Caleb Willingham, who she married in November 2022. 'A few years ago I came out as pansexual but after Caleb passing, I just don't want to be with men anymore,' Tammy said later in the preview clip. 'I don't know how my family is going to react when I tell them I'm seeing a woman.' Tammy's husband Caleb died from unknown causes at age 40 - just seven months after the couple tied the knot in November 2022.
