Made in Chelsea is a castle built on the sands of cheating, backstabbing and hysterical arguments, all of which offer perfect vehicles for showing off the inherent passive-aggression of the privileged. This calm and collected spin-off, Beyond Chelsea, follows three of its big-name stars – Binky Felstead, Rosie Fortescue and Lucy Watson – as they navigate their early 30s, through motherhood, businesses (and what businesses they are!), love and dating. Sadly, two of the three are in settled relationships, so the dating takes a back seat to discussions about weaning babies and what they got up to on Made in Chelsea but are far too mature to even consider these days.
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, as Marx and Engels once wrote. Binky, Rosie and Lucy try desperately to locate some upper class struggles – any struggles will do – for the sake of the narrative here. On a human level, the fact that this first episode is largely drama-free is a testament to the contentment that each seems to have found in their lives. Reality television can be a bear pit, and to watch them talk about how hard they work, how good they look and how happy they are is, in a funny way, mildly soothing and gently ambient, like an eight-hour brown noise YouTube video.
Yet to my mind, the point of reality television is to go to places where real life doesn’t actually go. Ironic, certainly, but this genre of TV isn’t documentary, it’s entertainment. Made in Chelsea has always been removed from ordinary, universal experience, and that is one of the reasons it has lasted for 28 series. We don’t necessarily relate to what’s happening on screen; we like the escapism of gawping at toffs while they argue about insignificant things as if they’re hammering out an international peace treaty.
Beyond Chelsea is an attempt to make reality TV grow up, and to keep moving with its biggest names. And so Binky talks about her three children, having a parent with a chronic illness and her work as “a fashion ambassador, a food ambassador and an investor”. Lucy talks about having a baby, her fertility struggles and setting up an underwear business. Rosie, fabulously, talks about how she just wants to look good for herself and forget about societal beauty standards, as her Botox doctor tells her that she is on “the upper end of looking perfect” but asks if she wants any extra help. Rosie says she would like to regain that “youthful glow”. At this point, I look up her age on the internet, which says she was born in 1990.
Rosie is the draw, really, because she is most filled with the original Made in Chelsea spirit. She is setting up a business which, if I have got this correct, will sell sustainable bags to go inside designer handbags, so you don’t have to use a plastic bag to line your Hermès. This could become an infinite loop of bags. If the sustainable bag is high-end itself, what will line that? Where will it end? Rosie also gets to date, and to be more blunt than the others, and though she says at the start that she thought she would never do reality TV again, she clearly knows what is required of it.
There are a couple of storylines that go deeper than the “sustainable Hermès handbag liner” level. Binky’s relationship with her mother, who has multiple sclerosis, is explored with frankness and honesty and is genuinely touching, while Lucy’s fertility struggles are sympathetic, too. But elsewhere, it becomes a gentle diary of their days, an iCal with video, a series of Instagram posts strung together. They go to a city farm with their children. Binky bakes a cake with Ollie Locke. The women sit around and drink in a bar, Made in Chelsea style, but everyone gets along famously and there’s no friction, just moderate chat. Everyone seems jolly nice. They do get around to teasing Lucy about her “why is everyone getting up in my grill” line, but they’re all so keen to move on from drama that there’s no consideration for the gap that its absence lays bare.
Maybe this is one for the diehard Made in Chelsea fans who have grown up with these women and whose lives may be reaching similar milestones, even if without quite the same bank balances. But for anyone who likes just a little bit of grit in their reality TV oyster, this may prove to be too classy, too well put-together and too friction-free to sustain itself.
• Beyond Chelsea aired on E4 and is on Channel 4.
