The cultural juggernaut that is Real Housewives is coming to London. The capital’s crop of glamorous, monied middle-aged women with short fuses will apparently include the wonderfully named Panthea Parker, someone known as “The Longest Legs in Belgravia” (Amanda Cronin), and a Chelsea baker called Nessie Welschinger.
It sounds like appointment viewing, but I feel it incumbent on me to ask: is Real Housewives a Good Thing? Gloria Steinem doesn’t think so. “They present women as rich, pampered, dependent and hateful towards each other,” she said in 2021. Other commentators, however, have pointed to the visibility the franchise offers a relatively underexposed demographic; the weighty themes sometimes covered, amid the froth; and the fact that, belying the reductive title, most of the “housewives” are successful, confident, professional people (albeit with a taste for drama).
