July 12, 2024 - 2:30pm
The news that Jacob Rees-Mogg and his family are to star in a fly-on-the-wall reality TV series can surely only be greeted by a heavy sigh. It’s the kind of TV executive’s idea that you overhear in Soho House when (in the metaphorical words of an old idiom) you haven’t got your gun. Endless hours of schedule must be filled up with cheapo tat, after all.
Writing in the Spectator this week, the Tory politician claimed that the programme had been “discussed but not agreed” before the general election was called — and before he lost his seat. Now, one imagines he has more time for filming.
The announcement of the Moggathon provides an indictment of both politicians and television, the latter of which is curling up and dying far sooner than it needs to. The shows that are desperately needed — popular hits, sitcoms and warm dramas — are shows that nobody in the increasingly self-important TV business wants to make.
What TV should be doing is marshalling its unique resources — superior production values, craft, its ability as a mass medium to cultivate broad appeal — to produce high-quality programmes. Instead they are making a few, mostly unwatched shows at the high end, plus a heck of a lot more “content” of the kind you could see on YouTube or TikTok — only worse.
Executives have been slow to realise that politics and reality TV don’t always mix well. The apparent recent popularity of Nigel Farage with the young is sometimes ascribed to his stint on I’m A Celebrity. This is an odd supposition, as it’s a very old show and it’s on ITV, which is very much not the viewing destination of the young. Rather, it is surely mastering social media during the election campaign that gave Farage his youth following. In a similar vein, Matt Hancock slightly swung up in the public estimation during his sojourn in the jungle, but then crashed on Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins.
When a politician signs up for a reality show, they are betting on an outcome that is split in only two possible directions: make an arse of yourself (Ann Widdecombe, Nadine Dorries), or make an arse of yourself but simultaneously reinvent yourself as a loveable arse (Ed Balls, Michael Portillo, the Hamiltons).
Only showy or notorious politicians — the Curries and the Opiks — truly work on TV. (Who remembers the very ordinary Kezia Dugdale’s turn on Celeb in 2017?) This is because TV loves the weird over the wonderful, and so the Rees-Moggs are ideally suited.
I am immune to Rees-Mogg’s eccentricities. Like most of his fellow Conservative ministers, he occasionally talked a good fight but was utterly useless when in power. What he does possess is a power to derange people online, of the type that we might call the Vorderman-Twitter nexus. Like Rees-Mogg, they like to pretend that it’s 1924, so they play off each other very neatly in a kind of symbiotic cosplay.
Rees-Mogg is an exact contemporary of mine, and has a long TV history. I remember seeing him on TV in about 1980, when he was already being wheeled on to our screens in a “get a load of this weirdo” kind of way. He was certainly the talk of the playground the next day, one of those eccentric children who television loves, of the same ilk as child genius Ruth Lawrence or antiques expert Lauren Harries.
You’d think it might have sunk in by now, and that he wouldn’t want any of that for his own children. But for him, the TV circus has never left town.
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SubscribeThe photo is miscaptioned, surely JRM is the chap on the left?
If only members of the Rees-Mogg family are to appear on the program (i.e. it’s not like Big Brother and Strictly and such), I think things will get very boring very quickly.
He was always a political lightweight, and that’s being charitable. I’m not in the least surprised.
I can recall seeing the former James Harries when he was on children’s television back in the day. It was fairly obvious then that his family was thoroughly creepy and exploitative, and I can’t say I am surprised to discover that these days he is trans. Under the circumstances, probably his best way to create a life for himself (unless it was another thing that was his mother’s idea). Hope the poor b*****d has got some happiness.
As for Jacob Rees-Mogg on reality television, I can’t see that he is actually weird enough to make it work. He has an old fogey style, sure, but it is not all that out there.
There are certainly enough in his mob to have some more than the average “star” to entertain. Perhaps Clarkson could be an adviser on “Rees-Mogg’s Farm”.
What a sour, unpleasant article. Not impressed!