Prison, revenge porn and blush-pink villas: your ultimate guide to the Real Housewives franchise
Despite its title, the show isn't really about marriage (most of the women aren't married, and those who are usually at some point during their tenure experience a messy divorce). What the franchise captures is something far more compelling: a specific sort of midlife reinvention. We watch as women (mostly over the age of 40) navigate divorce, grief, success, self-discovery and the pursuit of fame. As the former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Brandi Glanville put it: 'Andy Cohen [the show's executive producer] is the only man in Hollywood who hires women over 40.'
One of the most enduring qualities of the Real Housewives is that it doesn't produce throwaway reality stars – it creates cultural icons. Unlike much of reality television, which sees contestants flare up and burn out within a season (or even a few episodes), the Housewives universe invites long-term investment. We follow these women for years (and in the case of Beverly Hills, Atlanta or the OC, for well over a decade) as friendships fracture (always with a healthy amount of drama), marriages begin and end and children grow up (and we can now watch the housewives' offspring on the spin-off Next Gen NYC). In a genre built on instant gratification and rapid turnover, Housewives rewards patience. It feels less like disposable content and more like weekly event television – something to savour and return to, season after season (and rewatch obsessively).
This is how Real Housewives cultivates community. I've lost count of how many times I've been at a work event or awkward dinner where the mere mention of the women lights people up – suddenly, you're not strangers, you're part of a devoted tribe, debating whether the new New York cast are any good (spoiler: they will never be the same), or reeling from the news that the self-appointed grand dame of Potomac herself, Karen Huger, has been sentenced to prison. Once you're in, you're in. And once you've found your franchise, there's no going back.
That being said, the Real Housewives ecosystem holds a mammoth vault of episodes and choosing where to start can feel as daunting as it is exciting. The good news is that you can quite literally start anywhere. Each city offers something different, depending on what mood you're in. Beverly Hills serves bitchy opulence (think Lisa Vanderpump's blush-pink Villa Rosa). The original New York cast was truly wild – Ramona Singer's wide-eyed expressions are permanently etched in my memory, and Countess Luann's song Money Can't Buy You Class remains a certified banger. Atlanta will have you howling with laughter, delivering some of the best lines in the entire franchise.
Then there is The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, which has already cemented its place as one of the franchise's greatest hits, despite being a newer addition. Largely because the show is based in Utah (the home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), it landed a scandal right out of the gate, complete with federal indictments. One of the housewives, Jen Shah, became the centre of national attention following her 2021 arrest and subsequent guilty plea for wire fraud. Forever surrounded by numerous assistants (doing God knows what), Shah projected a lifestyle many suspected was funded by more than just her show salary. The drama drew high-profile fans such as Rihanna. There was also the infamous 'How did Heather get a black eye?' mystery. Heather Gay, one of the RHOSLC wives and author of the New York Times bestseller Bad Mormon, later revealed it was allegedly caused by Shah, who is now serving time alongside Elizabeth Holmes (of Theranos fame), and paparazzi have even captured shots of them together in prison.
Most recently, the show has offered some moments that will tug on even the coldest of heartstrings – particularly involving Mary Cosby (who, yes, famously married her step-grandfather). This season, Cosby's usually reserved demeanour gave way to vulnerability as her son's visible struggle with drug addiction unfolded on screen in a way that substance issues had never before been spoken about within the network.
My personal greatest love has to be The Real Housewives of Atlanta. It is a masterclass in shade and comedic brilliance. Just look at Phaedra Parks, who serves the coldest reads with the unflappable poise of a lawyer and embalmer (yes, she's both). Kim Zolciak, the only white woman in the original cast, insisted on wearing weaves. Then there's Kenya Moore, who was the perfect villain – eventually getting booted due to season 16's revenge porn debacle – in which she used her haircare launch to allegedly project explicit footage purporting to be of another cast member. Atlanta also introduced the world to NeNe Leakes – one of the rare Housewives to cross over into mainstream entertainment, landing a recurring role on Glee, a stint on The New Normal and Broadway roles in Cinderella and Chicago. She had, and has, actual star power.
And what to expect from The Real Housewives of London? Six women from the city's wealthiest circles (with genuinely pre-existing relationships). Making a return to reality TV is the Ladies of London alum Juliet Angus, the fashion-savvy American who's already generating excitement among longtime fans. She's joined by the skincare CEO Amanda Cronin, who may be stepping into the villain role – if the teaser is anything to go by. In one scene, she's seen yelling: 'Go back to Paddington!' and edging close to one of the other wives, though she has described herself as 'the light in every room'.
There's the party planner and former pageant queen Juliet Mayhew, and Karen Loderick-Pierce, whose early love of fashion came from her grandfather (part of the Windrush generation), who used to send her clothes from London to Jamaica. Early teasers hint she may emerge as the show's confessional queen.
Rounding out the group is Panthea Parker, who describes the show as 'stiff upper lip meets crazy Housewives'. She can apparently drop £140,000 on a single shopping spree without batting a false eyelash. And finally, there's Nessie Welschinger, a financier turned baker and self-professed tiger mum. The trailer teases high society and even higher drama.
The same is true of the extensions to the franchise: the (three-part!) reunions and spin-off shows.
One of the longest-standing cast members of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Kandi Burruss – formerly of the R&B group Xscape (she also co-wrote Bills Bills Bills for Destiny's Child) – has Kandi & the Gang (featuring her family and restaurant). Meanwhile Zolciak, another original Atlanta housewife, headlined her own spin-off, Don't Be Tardy, which chronicled her home life with her husband, Kroy Biermann, and their blended family in a more domestic, sitcom-style format.
It would be remiss not to mention 'Scandoval' from Vanderpump Rules, one of Lisa Vanderpump's spin-offs, which was quite possibly Bravo's most viral betrayal to date. Tom Sandoval, a longtime cast member, was caught cheating on his long-term partner, Ariana Madix, with their co-star Raquel Leviss. The drama played out across social media platforms like Instagram, (then) Twitter and dedicated Vanderpump Rules subreddits, on which fans recalled exactly where they were the moment 'Scandoval broke', often noting the precise day and time it dropped. Viewers also debated timelines and theories about how long Sandoval and Leviss had been seeing each other before the reveal, fuelling endless speculation and discussion online. The controversy elevated Madix to almost 'god-like' status with brand deals aplenty. It was reality TV at its operatic best.
In addition to the spin-offs, the last couple of years have seen frankly drastic makeovers across the franchise. New York ushered in its influencer era – a complete recast featuring younger women with strong social media presences – and has been renewed, cancelled and reportedly renewed (and cancelled) again. Atlanta has welcomed a completely new cast – bringing back OG Porsha Williams and finally elevating her bestie (at least until they appeared on the show together) and longtime 'friend of the show' Shamea Morton to full-time cast member with her own intro and storyline. Orange County has blended returning originals such as Shannon Beador and Tamra Judge with newer voices – with some hitting and failing to land.
The Real Housewives of London offers those still hungry for yet another universe to lose themselves in – this time, with a completely clean slate. Whether it becomes an instant fan favourite remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: even for those who've never sat through a full episode, these women are firmly embedded in the cultural mainstream and thankfully, they're not going anywhere. The joy of Housewives is that no matter where you begin, it's never long before you're all in.
The Real Housewives of London is on Hayu in the UK on 18 August
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BBC News
3 minutes ago
- BBC News
Terence Stamp: 1960s icon who was the 'master of the brooding silence'
Terence Stamp's dashing good looks and smouldering glare made him a star of 1960s of the stalwarts of Swinging London, the working class actor's first film earned him an Oscar actress Julie Christie or supermodel Jean Shrimpton on his arm, he specialised in playing sophisticated villains: including Superman's arch nemesis, General Zod, and the petulant Sergeant Troy in Far From the Madding Guardian called him the "master of the brooding silence", but Stamp's acting proved to have range as well as years after his career began, he shocked his fans - but picked up a Golden Globe nomination - as Bernadette Bassenger in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Terence Henry Stamp was born in Stepney, east London, on 22 July father, a man Stamp once described as "emotionally closed down", was a ship's stoker and often away from Terence's interest in acting began to blossom when his mother took him to the local cinema to see Gary Cooper in Beau Geste, a film that left a deep impression on enduring the Blitz in the east end of London, the Stamp family moved to the more genteel Plaistow - where Terence attended grammar school before getting the first of a series of jobs in advertising his autobiography, Stamp Album, he recalled how he loved the life, but he could not shake off the feeling he wanted to be an actor. Having been turned down for National Service because of problems with his feet, he won a scholarship to the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art - which got rid of his cockney completing his studies, he set out on the grinding local repertory circuit that was the training ground for all aspiring actors in the one occasion, he found himself in a touring production of The Long and the Short and the Tall alongside another budding actor named Michael Caine, with whom he would later share a leap to stardom came when he was cast in the title role of a 1962 film, Billy Budd, based on the Herman Melville novella. His performance as the naïve young seaman, hanged for killing an officer in self-defence, won him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe for Best Newcomer. In the same year, he appeared in Term of Trial alongside Laurence was hailed as one of the new wave of actors from working-class backgrounds, such as Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay, who were also making a name for 1965, Stamp starred in an adaptation of the John Fowles novel The Collector, as the repressed Frederick Clegg who kidnaps a girl and imprisons her in his now, he was regularly seen at the most fashionable 1960's gatherings, and his good looks brought him plenty of female was a relationship with the actress Julie Christie, who he'd approached after seeing her holding a gun on a magazine cover in affair only lasted a year, but was later immortalised by the Kinks in the song Waterloo Sunset: with a line referencing Terry and Julie crossing over the river. He turned down the chance to star in Alfie, having played the part on stage. His flatmate, Michael Caine, took the role instead and it launched his 1966, Stamp appeared as Willie Garvin - a rough Cockney diamond - in the film version of Peter O'Donnell's comic strip, Modesty a year later, he starred as a bank-robber-with-a-soft-heart in Ken Loach's kitchen sink drama, Poor found Loach difficult. The director, he felt, was too political and hid the script from the cast - preferring to feed them lines while shooting each scene."Before a take, he'd say something to (co-star Carol White)," he complained, "and then he would say something to me, and we only discovered once the camera was rolling that he'd given us completely different directions. That's why he needed two cameras, because he needed the confusion and the spontaneity." He was reunited with Julie Christie in Far From the Madding Crowd. He was dating Jean Shrimpton by then, but their on-screen chemistry was still evident."On the set, the fact that she had been my girlfriend just never came up," he told The Guardian in 2015. "I saw her as Bathsheba, the character she was playing, who all the men in the film fell in love with. But it wasn't hard, with somebody like Julie."With cinematographer Nicholas Roeg, Stamp helped choreograph the famous fencing demonstration scene: in which Sergeant Troy's sword skills captivate - and eventually seduce - Bathsheba the film got poor reviews and failed at the box office. And Stamp fell out with the director, John Schlesinger."He didn't strike me as a guy who was particularly interested in film," the actor recalled. "Plus I wasn't his first choice: he really wanted Jon Voight." But Stamp's star was beginning to fade. An outing in Blue - a "pretentious, self-conscious, literary Western without much zest", according to one critic - didn't help. He was approached to play James Bond when Sean Connery relinquished the role, but his radical ideas of how he should interpret the character did not impress producer Harry suggested that he might start a Bond film disguised as a Japanese warrior - and slowly reveal himself to be 007."I think my ideas about it put the frighteners on Harry," he speculated. "I didn't get a second call from him." There was a spell in Italy where he worked with the directors Pier Paolo Pasolini and Federico Fellini but, by the time he returned to London, the 60s were drawing to a close and he was no longer in fashion."When the 1960s ended, I just ended with it. I remember my agent telling me: 'They are all looking for a young Terence Stamp.'" He was still only he bought a round-the-world ticket and found himself in India - experimenting with vegetarianism, yoga and living in a spiritual was there, in 1976, that he received a message addressed to 'Clarence' Stamp, offering him the part of General Zod in Superman. With his leading man days behind him, Stamp discovered that playing villains was and the sequel, Superman II, put him firmly back on the public stage - and he appeared in a bewildering variety of genres. There were Westerns like Young Guns, crime dramas like The Hit and The Real McCoy - and even a gothic thriller in Neil Jordan's fantasy, The Company of his most unlikely - and celebrated - performance was as transgender woman in the Australian film, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in was not keen to do the film - in fact, he thought the initial offer was a a female friend persuaded him to take the part - which saw his character journey across the outback with two drag queens, played by Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce."It was a challenge, a challenge I couldn't resist because otherwise my life would have been a lie", said Stamp. Over the next 10 years, Stamp appeared in two dozen films - playing a wide variety of 1999, he entered the Star Wars canon: playing a politician battling corruption in Episode I: the Phantom Menace - an experience he later described as "dull".More satisfyingly, he starred in The Limey: as a career English criminal hunting for his missing daughter.A decade later, he was nominated for a Bafta for his role as the grumpy husband of a dying woman in A Song for 2002, he married for the first time at the age of had met Elizabeth O'Rourke in a chemist shop in Australia. She was 35 years younger, and the marriage lasted six years. Terence Stamp continued to act well into his parts - like his fleeting appearance as a silver-haired gentleman in Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho in 2021 - grew smaller, although a sequel to Priscilla was in will be remembered as the actor who blazed like a comet at the height of the 1960s, surrounded by the decade's most beautiful career fizzled close to extinction, but he showed an impressive ability to reinvent himself - with his ability to project style and menace bringing him to the attention of new was a career that unfolded with no thought of planning, no clear strategy and no goal in mind. "I don't have any ambitions," Stamp once said. "I'm always amazed there's another job." "I've done crap, because sometimes I didn't have the rent. But when I've got the rent, I want to do the best I can."
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3 minutes ago
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MasterChef winner claims John Torode was 'hung out to dry' by BBC bosses after he was axed for 'using a racist slur'
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Daily Mail
3 minutes ago
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Sunday Brunch viewers are left in a frenzy just minutes into the show's latest episode
Sunday Brunch viewers were left in a frenzy just minutes into the show's latest episode, and quickly took to X to share their thoughts. The Channel 4 programme returned on Sunday with Tom Grennan, Caity Baser, Susie Dent, Alfie Allen, Conor MacNeill and Joy Crookes as guests. But despite Tom Grennan headlining Radio 1's Big Weekend and Caity Baser having a huge social media following and touring the UK, viewers were left unhappy as they claimed they barely knew the guests. Aside from Countdown's Susie Dent, many fans were left unsure on who the other guests were and flocked to social media to share their thoughts. Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, posts included: 'I know 3 of them, its a WR for me. #sundaybrunch.' '#sundaybrunch @sundaybrunch Susie Dent is the only one I have heard of due to Countdown.' ;'I know 2 of them this week #sundaybrunch .' The complaints come after presenter Morgan McGlynn Carr has shared a health update with fans after she revealed she was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer. The TV star and author, 38, who has a regular spot as a cheese expert on the show, recently posted a picture of her from her hospital bed as she announced the 'earth shattering' news. In October 2024, Morgan received her diagnosis after finding a lump in her right breast and received six months of weekly chemotherapy. On two occasions doctors told the mother-of-one the lump was breast-feeding related, but after having a gut feeling something still wasn't quite right she went for a third opinion and got her diagnosis - which she says 'saved her life'. Now, Morgan has shared a positive health update with fans as she appeared on the latest episode of the Channel 4 show on Sunday. Speaking to hosts Simon Rimmer and Tim Lovejoy, she broke down in tears as she told the anchors she's been given 'the all clear'. While fighting back tears, she explained: 'As some of you know and some of you don't, I'm already wobbling, I am sorry.' Tim then reached to comfort Morgan before she continued: 'I got diagnosed with breast cancer last October, so we got the all clear, like a week ago.' But despite Tom Grennan headlining Radio 1's Big Weekend and Caity Baser having a huge social media following and touring the UK, viewers were left unhappy as they claimed they barely knew the guests The complaints come after presenter Morgan McGlynn Carr has shared a health update with fans after she revealed she was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer In a touching moment, the entire studio then erupted into applause for Morgan as she was visibly taken aback by the reaction. She added: 'I was just going to say, check your lumps, your bumps and trust your gut and yeah, that's it really.' The Cheese expert added thanked everyone again for the support she's received, saying: 'Yes, I've been taken on surprise trips and I've had the biggest support system including you guys as well.' Morgan has graced the screen alongside Sunday Brunch hosts Tim Lovejoy and Simon Rimmer since 2016. The cheese presenter confirmed she is now 'healing' as she joyfully admitted she received some 'very, very good news' following surgery last month. Sharing her journey, she wrote: 'On the eve of my daughter's first birthday, I found a lump in my right breast. I'd recently stopped breastfeeding and assumed it was related. 'But my husband made me promise to go to the doctor first thing Monday - and, by pure chance it happened to be CoppaFeel! Week. My feed was full of women talking about breast cancer. 'The GP said it was definitely breastfeeding-related. The breast clinic consultant said she was 99% sure it was nothing. 'I got a third opinion and that decision saved my life... Trust your gut. Always. 'After scans, biopsies, mammograms, CTs, MRIs - in October 2024, I was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer. It was nothing short of earth-shattering. 'But we've done our best to keep life feeling normal as possible for our daughter. Treatment is different for every person. No two paths are the same. But here's what happened to me: 'I was given a week before chemo to get my ducks in a row, which included chopping my hair off and IVF and egg retrival, something I'm incredibly grateful I was able to do. 'Then came six months of weekly chemotherapy. The hardest thing I've ever done. Some weeks I sat for 13 hours at a time, and I was never alone thanks to my friends who kept me company. On two occasions doctors told the mother-of-one the lump was breast-feeding related, but after having a gut feeling something still wasn't quite right she went for a third opinion and got her diagnosis - which she says 'saved her life 'And those who've been through the cold cap you'll known it's no joke. I had to catch my breath and get through the hardest parts before sharing this. So why now? 'Because if even one person sees this, and it prompts them to check a lump or get a second opinion, it could save a life. Please, trust your gut.' Morgan revealed she had a successful surgery last month and received some 'very good news' a few days ago. She continued: 'Two weeks ago, I had surgery - and a few days later, we got some very, very good news. 'I've not really known how to share this. To be honest, I'm still finding my feet after everything.' Morgan added: 'This year has changed me. There's still a road to recovery to come - but I'm here, I'm healing, and I'm more grateful than I've been.' Morgan is the UK's leading cheese expert and owner of Cheeses of Muswell Hill, an award-winning independent cheese shop in North London. She is also a top judge at the World Cheese Awards. What is triple negative breast cancer? Triple negative breast cancer is a form of the disease that does not have receptors for the hormones oestrogen or progesterone, or the protein HER2. This makes it trickier to treat due to the tumour not responding to these hormonal or protein therapies. Triple negative breast cancer makes up around 10-to-20 per cent of all forms of the disease. It tends to be more aggressive than other breast tumours, with patients having a worse prognosis. The condition is more common in those under 40 and black women. It is diagnosed via a sample of the cancerous cells. Symptoms are similar to other forms of breast cancer. These can include: Lump or thickening in the breast Change in the size, shape or feel of the breast Dimpling of the skin Change in the shape of the nipple Rash or blood-stained discharge coming from the nipple Swelling in the armpit Treatment usually involves surgery, chemo and radiotherapy. Chemo may be given first to shrink the tumour before a patient goes under the knife. It may also be given after the operation to prevent the disease returning.
