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The Osbournes
2002 · TV series · 30 min episodes · 4 seasons
The Osbournes is an American reality television program featuring the domestic life of heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne and his family. The series premiered on MTV on March 5, 2002, and in its first season, was cited as the most-viewed series ever on MTV. The final episode of the series aired March 21, 2005.
2 positive2 neutralfrom 4 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
If you voted in a new royal family who had to consent to a reality TV show, you would get a lot more tourism. I hear the Osbournes are back in town.
Channel 4 is a "public service" channel only in the sense that it was one of the first four channels to come into existence at a time when the quid pro quo for having a broadcast licence was that challenging, worthy, high-quality programmes were broadcast.
Today, Channel 4 is still technically a PSB, but it's not and has never been "non-commercial" - it shows adverts and makes profits just like any other commercial channel.
Calling "Benefits Street" a documentary would be like saying that Jersey Shore or The Osbournes was a documentary. It's not.
> (unrelated but I personally found the censored version of The Osbournes to be much funnier than the uncensored version)
...and perhaps that's why it's important to keep the language in? Bleeping it reduces the effect.
Something similar happened in Robocop; the scene showing ED-209 machine gunning the junior executive was originally very long. The MPAA gave the film an X rating, so lots of the the movie was cut. The machine gunning was now short, efficient. That turned a scene which was darkly comic, totally ridiculous, into something much more chilling.
A tough situation but based on the info in the article, I have to side with the MPAA on this one. They say the R rating is due to the language used and the counter-argument is that high-schoolers are the ones using this language so it should be PG-13. Doesn't make sense since this assumes that all teenagers speak like the 'bullies' depicted in the film.
I would hope that the producers can come up with a solution to have the film rated PG-13 since it will definitely be more widely seen by the target audience in that case. If editing the most offensive cases out is not an option perhaps bleeping them out a-la "The Osbournes" would appease the MPAA. (unrelated but I personally found the censored version of The Osbournes to be much funnier than the uncensored version)