In Television as in Music, Ozzy Osbourne Was the Revolution

Revisiting The Osbournes over 20 years later, the appeal of the groundbreaking reality show is immediately clear. Starring the late Ozzy Osbourne, his wife Sharon, and children Kelly and Jack, the MTV series positioned itself as a family sitcom without a script, immediately finding the humor in a slightly middle-aged rock star and his family behaving… just like ordinary people.

They weren’t, of course, “ordinary” people, but for the same reason that tabloid fans spark to “they’re just like us!” photo spreads, The Osbournes found real power in depicting the trivial moments of this family’s day, Ozzy’s off-the-cuff asides serving as the perfect punchlines. The first season in particular kept things relatively grounded, with Ozzy’s rock star life blending into family squabbles and tending to the family’s massive menagerie of pets. (If you’ve ever wanted to see a bulldog defecate on camera, then Season 1, Episode 2 is waiting for you.)

And while the storytelling had a documentary feel, the classic tropes were there: The rebellious yet loving kids, the hard-working mom with her own quirks, and the silly, exasperated father figure. The opening titles play like any sitcom, with Lewis Lamedica covering Ozzy’s “Crazy Train” like it’s an old Sinatra standard — not dissimilar from the classic sitcom Married With Children’s use of “Love and Marriage.” And while Sharon’s first billed, the credits end with “and Ozzy Osbourne as ‘The Dad'” — bringing him into a proud tradition going back to the days of Archie Bunker and Carl Winslow. Dads who didn’t always know best, but cared enough to try.

A 2022 oral history for The Ringer breaks down how the show’s producers worked hard to give the series an organic feel, embedding themselves in the family home during filming, and rejecting the idea of talking-head interviews. Instead, especially during the first season, Ozzy, Sharon, Kelly, and Jack just interacted with each other like the cameras weren’t there, and the result was the sort of unfiltered, if maybe occasionally staged, access we’ve come to crave from the famous. Nothing makes a man more relatable than watching him cuss out his dog for eating a couch cushion.

Later seasons would focus more on the way that the family’s lives were changed by their newfound fame, creating a true ouroboros of stardom. At the time The Osbournes premiered, pop culture was already starting to create new personalities out of nowhere — there have always been people who became famous without actually doing much to earn that fame, but reality TV was just becoming an instrument for that kind of success.

While his family members became household names off The Osbournes, Ozzy remained relatively himself, casually ambling around the house in sweatpants. In a 2012 interview, the rock star said that he was not sober during the show’s three years of filming, something that’s not not obvious on screen. His mellow vibe, though, only contributes to the fundamental power of seeing someone so famous for his heavy metal antics on stage be himself behind the scenes, doing his best to parent his kids and marveling at the magic of a Chipotle burrito.

One of the great moments on The Osbournes was Ozzy watching his burrito get made at Chipotle in sheer reverence.

It was like he was witnessing Michelangelo sculpt David right in front of him. pic.twitter.com/RbqosxaLXp

— Mike Beauvais (@MikeBeauvais) July 22, 2025

The Osbournes wasn’t just a game-changer for Ozzy’s public perception — it essentially helped create an entire sub-genre of reality television, one which would go on to assume a worldwide interest in the lives of other famous families, rich housewives, and people who work on boats. Meanwhile, Sharon found herself with an ongoing career as a TV personality and Kelly got to explore both music and hosting (she’ll be on Fox soon as the host of competition series LEGO Masters Jr.).

Jack also continued making reality TV to this day, often shows involving his parents — as just one recent example, the 2020 Travel Channel series The Osbournes Want to Believe featured Jack, Sharon, and Ozzy watching paranormal videos together. Both seasons are streaming now on HBO Max. Doing The Osbournes as a teenager, Jack told The Ringer, “unlocked an amazing life, and I’ve been so blessed to have had a camera in my house for a couple of years. I’ve been able to have a career in television for 20 years now just kind of rolling from one project to the next and traveling all over the world and making really fun TV shows. So it was all worth it in the end.”

The Osbournes can’t be considered a truly authentic portrait of this family — the genre should never be considered a mirror — and in general reality television has contributed no shortage of negativity to the world. But in its best moments, it finds a way to capture the shared experiences all of us humans face from time to time. I’ll never know what it’s like to hold a stadium of metal fans in the palm of my hand, but I can watch Ozzy sigh over a beloved pet’s mess and think to myself, “yeah, man, been there.”

We would be mourning Ozzy’s music today, no matter what. The Osbournes ensured that we also remember the man.

The Osbournes is streaming now on Prime Video, Tubi, and The Roku Channel.