When people ask me about my favorite television show, my mind immediately goes to one thing. I wish I could say it was, like, Twin Peaks or Succession or something, but really, if I’m being honest, it’s the Real Housewives franchise—specifically The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, closely followed by The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. There’s no truly justifiable reason for my love of Real Housewives other than the fact that I like seeing rich people do weird things like hiring a vaping psychic as the dinner party entertainment, or accusing someone of doing “crystal meth all night long in the bathroom, bitch” over a casual game of cards.
Which is why it came as a welcome surprise to hear that, after much speculation and waiting, The Real Housewives of London is finally coming to our screens. We don’t know much about the series yet—they’ve not even finished casting it, and production is set to commence early next year, with a release date some time in 2025. But I’ve seen enough Real Housewives over the years to make some educated guesses about what it’ll (probably) look like. Here are my predictions.
It will (hopefully) be like Ladies of London
While there’s never been a London-based Real Housewives, Bravo did release Ladies of London 10 years back, which ran for three seasons and was basically the same thing. Picture this: a group of rich ladies with bouffant blow-dried hair saying things like “Let’s get bloody sozzled!” before having fights in Michelin-starred restaurants as menacing piano music plays in the background. One of my favorite quotes from the series—which makes very little sense without context but which might give you an idea of the specific brand of mania that we could be in store for—is: “Don’t straddle my husband and hump him.” Please, can they just release an updated version of this?
High tea, black cabs, and royals
Though The Real Housewives of London will likely be a UK-only release at first, the franchise tends to attract a global audience, which means that it’ll probably ramp up the British stereotypes (in this case: a lot of viciously clipped words over high tea and an unhealthy amount of referencing the royals in everyday conversation). To be fair, they tend to do this in every version of Housewives so that each series has its specific “brand”; in RHOBH, they show you constant shots of Rodeo Drive and tiny, frightening dogs in strollers, while RHOSLC is basically one long lesson in Mormonism on chaos mode. So we can expect a bit of that, but the London version.
There could be some familiar faces
It’d be unusual for an entirely new reality series to launch without a single familiar face, so it wouldn’t be at all surprising if they managed to lure in at least one Big Name. Some are suggesting Molly-Mae Hague as an obvious choice—although I doubt she needs the paycheck, nor the drama—while other names that are being thrown around are Trinny Woodall (a reality TV veteran), Caprice Bourret from Ladies of London, and maybe even a Made in Chelsea alumna like Millie Mackintosh. If we’re really lucky—and I’ll pray to Andy Cohen himself—we may even get a Vanderpump (probably not Lisa, as she’s got swans to feed at Villa Rosa, but you never know). As I said, casting is not yet complete, so all of this is conjecture.
It could be (one of) the best Housewives franchises yet
If there’s one thing that British people are good at—like, really, really good at—it’s off-the-wall, borderline surreal reality television. This is the birthplace of “Dear lord, what a sad little life, Jane” and “David’s Dead” and “They were old maiden type of shoes.” It’s hard to pinpoint, let alone explain, why our reality TV is like this, but it’s probably something to do with a culture that simultaneously takes itself very seriously and not seriously at all, which results in a particular sort of camp that is impossible to manufacture. (“In pure camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naive” – Susan Sontag, Notes on Camp.)
Either way, it stands to reason that the most absurd franchise coming to the most absurd country, television-wise, could be a formula for high art? I can hardly wait.