The Cotswolds had better steel itself: reality television is upon it. A series is planned (rumoured working title: Ladies of the Cotswolds) and it sounds posher than most. It’s made by the company behind Grand Designs and set in the “chocolate box” town of Charlbury, in the Evenlode valley.
Names are being proposed for the series, such as Gabriela Peacock (nutritionist entrepreneur married to hedge fund banker David Peacock, and pals with Joan Collins and Princess Beatrice). Plum Sykes (author of last year’s Cotswolds-set novel Wives Like Us) is thought to be scripting the voiceover. Then there’s “Suzie Jet” (Suzannah Harvey), CEO of the local airport. How marvellously down to earth and relatable they all sound. Though of course they don’t, and that’s the point.
There’s a semi-antecedent to Ladies of the Cotswolds – Ladies of London, which aired from 2014 to 2017 on Bravo. There’s also the reality juggernaut Made in Chelsea, though that’s pitched younger. The rural element of this latest toff-reality cultural fusion seems to link the success of the 2024 Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals with the ongoing Brit obsession with the generationally wealthy.
Thus, the Cotswolds is ideal: running through counties including Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Wiltshire, it’s Posh Central, anddubbed the “Hamptons of the UK”. It is chocka with salubrious hangouts: Soho Farmhouse; Estelle Manor; The Bull, in Charlbury; The Pig in the Cotswolds. Celebrity locals include Kate Moss; the Beckhams; and Claudia Winkleman. The Chipping Norton set: Jeremy Clarkson, the Camerons, Blur’s Alex James; Rebekah Brooks. Taylor Swift is thought to have stayed near Great Tew when she was performing on the UK leg of her Eras tour. Now, Beyoncé and Jay-Z are said to be contemplating buying a property in the Cotswolds area.
In this way, the series ties in less with old money, rolling hills and stately piles and more with toff influencers pushing lifestyle aspiration on social media. Which makes the Cotswolds less a region, rather an uber-gentrified brand redolent of honey-hued cottages, ice baths and welly-boot scrapers. In what may be a deal breaker for many, it’s apparently difficult to secure housekeepers and grooms.
In more prosaic terms, there are problems with overtourism and locals being priced out of the area. Still, one can only read, enviously rapt, about the freshwater swimming pools, organic farm shops, multiple kitchens and stables with Range Rovers. The very best that rural England (stealth wealth division) has to offer.
All of which makes it strange to hear that Ladies is inspired by The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and the extended Real Housewives global franchise. In the UK, there’s The Real Housewives of Cheshire, while The Real Housewives of London is mooted. Real Housewives content tends to have three main components: grooming, gossip and drama. Cast members are required to, shall we say, speak their truth. Add hair extensions, shellac nails and almost daily gown-fittings and it’s part glittering social whirl, part bloodbath.
How would this brand of “reality” land in the Cotswolds, where the properly wealthy don’t require the cash, and the famously private don’t need the exposure? An area where high-flying financiers don’t want their lives turned into reputational rubble, and landowners wouldn’t know a Molly-Mae Hague from an irrigation trench in the fallow field. Even now, there are reports of Cotswold establishments being disinclined to give Ladies permission to film on their premises. In terms of Cotswolds sensibilities and etiquette, would appearing on reality TV be considered a faux pas?
Rupert Wesson is director of Debrett’s, the authority on traditions, society and culture. “People who are very wealthy don’t feel the need to expose themselves,” he says, but “nowadays the barriers for what is filmed for media channels and what is filmed for TV are blurring”. Wesson lives in the Cotswolds and points out it already has a prominent reality TV show, Prime Video’s Clarkson’s Farm. Also, that aristocrats have sometimes allowed cameras to film their estates and themselves, often to help finance the astronomical upkeep.
Wouldn’t wealthy Cotswolds types consider appearing on reality TV naff? “They’d just see it as unnecessary,” Wesson says, adding that Debrett’s wouldn’t take a view. “We tend not to opine on this sort of thing.” Would such an area produce reality-style material? “There are plenty of people who want to be on TV and are prepared to sign up to what I think the professionals call heightened reality. Most people will know it isn’t real life – it’s just a curated version. Still they buy into it. I’m sure it will look beautiful. I’m sure the people on it will look beautiful. That in itself is enough to draw people in.”
Playing into all this is the ever-shifting nature of reality TV itself, and the ongoing censure of it. Its content (augmented; premeditated; soft-scripted) has long been disparaged as the enemy of creativity. In 2014, Gary Oldman called it “the museum of social decay”, adding of the Kardashians: “My dog has more dignity than those fuckers.”
It perhaps says something that, bar Made in Chelsea and the odd aristo-participant (Lady Colin Campbell; Lord Brocket) in I’m a Celebrity … , drama rather than reality is where our longstanding fascination (and scorn, and sometimes affection) for the rich and privileged has played out: historically (Brideshead Revisited) and more recently in Succession; The White Lotus; and Rivals. Are wealthy people less likely to play the reality TV game because, frankly, they don’t need to? Is this going to be a problem for Ladies of the Cotswolds?
As Netflix’s With Love, Meghan lifestyle-love-in demonstrated, there can be only so much enthralment watching wealthy sorts collecting honey from photogenic hives, or sprinkling flowers on food. In cynical Britain, there’s only so much aspirational swanking audiences can take, before they cry: “Where’s the dirt?” And they don’t mean scraping good honest Cotswold mud off Le Chameau wellies. At the same time, an era where lifestyle is king, does it matter so long as we all get to peek inside their Aga Rangemasters?
