'The Osbournes' changed Ozzy's image from grisly to cuddly, and changed reality TV

LOS ANGELES (AP) — There was Ozzy before “The Osbournes” and Ozzy after “The Osbournes.”

For much of his life, the Black Sabbath founder and legendary heavy metal frontman who died at 76 on Tuesday was known to much of the public as a dark purveyor of deeds ranging from decadent to downright Satanic.

Wild stories followed him. Clergy condemned him. Parents sued him.

But with the debut of his family reality show on MTV, the world learned what those who'd been paying closer attention already knew: Ozzy Osbourne was soft and fuzzy under the darkness.

During its relatively short run from 2002 to 2005, “The Osbournes” became a runaway hit and made stars of his wife Sharon and kids Jack and Kelly. But more than that, it made a star of the domesticated version of Ozzy Osbourne, and in the process changed reality TV.

In 2025, when virtually every variety of celebrity has had a reality show, it's hard to see what a novelty the series was. MTV sold it as television's first “reality sitcom."

“Just the idea of the Black Sabbath founder, who will forever be known for biting the head off a bat during a 1982 concert, as a family man seems strange,” Associated Press Media Writer David Bauder wrote on the eve of “The Osbournes” premiere. But on the show, Osbourne was "sweetly funny — and under everything a lot like the put-upon dads you’ve been seeing in television sitcoms for generations.”

Danny Deraney, a publicist who worked with Osbourne and was a lifelong fan, said of the show, "You saw some guy who was curious. You saw some guy who was being funny. You just saw pretty much the real thing.”

“He’s not the guy that everyone associates with the ‘Prince of Darkness’ and all this craziness,” Deraney said. "And people loved him. He became so affable to so many people because of that show. As metal fans, we knew it. We knew that’s who he was. But now everyone knew.”

Reality shows at the time, especially the popular competition shows like “Survivor,” thrived on heightened circumstances. For “The Osbournes,” no stakes were too low.

They sat on the couch. They ate dinner. The now-sober Ozzy sipped Diet Cokes, and urged his kids not to indulge in alcohol or drugs when they went out. He struggled to find the History Channel on his satellite TV. They feuded with the neighbors because, of all things, their loud music was driving the Osbournes crazy.

“You were seeing this really fascinating, appealing, bizarre tension between the public persona of a celebrity and their mundane experiences at home,” said Kathryn VanArendonk, a critic for Vulture and New York Magazine.

The sitcom tone was apparent from its first moments.

“You turn on this show and you get this like little jazzy cover theme song of the song ‘Crazy Train,’ and there’s all these bright colors and fancy editing, and we just got to see this like totally 180-degree different side of Ozzy which was just surprising and incredible to watch," said Nick Caruso, staff editor at TVLine.

Like family sitcoms, the affection its leads clearly had for each other was essential to its appeal.

“For some reason, we kind of just fell in love with them the same way that we grew to love Ozzy and Sharon as like a marital unit," Caruso said.

What was maybe strangest about the show was how not-strange it felt. The two Ozzies seemed seamless rather than contradictory.

“You’re realizing that these things are personas and that all personas are these like elaborate complex mosaics of like who a person is,” VanArendonk said.

“The Osbournes” had both an immediate and a long-term affect on the genre.

Both Caruso and VanArendonk said shows like “Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica,” which followed then-pop stars Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey after they married, was clearly a descendant.

And countless other shows felt its influence, from “The Kardashians” to “The Baldwins” — the recently debuted reality series on Alec Baldwin, his wife Hilaria and their seven kids.

“'The Baldwins’ as a reality show is explicitly modeled on ‘The Osbournes,’ VanArendonk said. ”It’s like you have these famous people and now you get to see what their home lives are like, what they are like as parents, what they’re eating, what they are taking on with them on vacation, who their pets are, and they are these sort of cuddly, warm, eccentric figures.”