“You’re a wanker!” shouts someone at Jacob Rees-Mogg in news footage at the start of this much talked-about show, which just about captures the general public opinion of him.
It is a public image which Jacob has always embraced not rejected, as we are reminded of his famous appearance in the Commons reclining in idle contempt on the front benches on the eve of a vote on Boris Johnson’s future, amused at the stir he was causing. Labour MP Anna Turley later called him “The physical embodiment of arrogance, disrespect and contempt for our parliament.” But here he admits, “I quite enjoy winding people up.”
Which must be a major part of the motivation for him to take part in Meet the Rees-Moggs, which is clearly being set up for that most British of things: a hate watch.
You feel he’s perfectly happy to live up to his image and for people to see him getting looked after by the same nanny that cared for him as a baby. Underneath it all, you imagine he’s keen to exploit the humanising aspects that reality TV can bring but suspect he’s ignorant of the dangers of exposing your family to the public in such a way, as with The Osbournes.
Regardless, Rees-Mogg presses on with that odd mix of arrogance and naivety which characterises him.
“This will be a different kettle of fish from the Kardashians,” Rees-Mogg says up front, before admitting, “Well I have no idea, I haven’t watched the programmes about them, so I don’t really have a clue.”
This is very different to The Kardashians, a family who operate in a lofty world of Hollywood royalty, a fantasy luxury-porn lifestyle of fashion, shopping, fellow celebrities and heavy grooming. The Rees-Moggs are not even English royalty. While they’re decidedly posh, from Old Families – particularly Lady Helena de Chair, who is descended from one of Jacob’s heroes, Thomas Wentworth – and live between a Westminster town house and Gournay Court country house in Somerset, this is a fairly humdrum world we are given access to.
In the first two episodes, we follow him on the campaign trail in the run-up to the Tory Party’s disastrous defeat in the 2024 election. As he unsuccessfully defends his North East Somerset and Hanham seat, we follow him as he does a lot of leafletting, doorstep chats and trips to Greggs: one of the running gags here is that Rees-Mogg eats like a child, no vegetables, with his favourite snack being the Greggs chocolate eclairs. Such is life on the British campaign trail.
And actually, on the home-front there is little here for concern. The Rees-Moggs have six children, but the oldest three are at boarding school leaving only the youngest three boys at home, who go to day school in London. They seem like nice enough kids, and Rees-Mogg is a nice enough dad. In fact, he’s a complete pushover, far from the patrician old timer of appearances. Sure he tries to encourage them into Catholicism and makes everyone wear black tie for dinner on a Saturday night, but he’s not hard about it when they give him a bit of backchat.
Is this done for the cameras? The nice guy act? If it is, we never see it challenged by the film-makers.
Indeed, this show is also something of a pushover, a disappointment in how light a touch it is, more concerned with showing Rees-Mogg as a classic British twit rather than digging into what makes him “one of the country’s most controversial politicians”. This is more of a gentle daytime TV watch about a mildly eccentric family than any expose of out-of-touch politicians being swept away by long-suffering voters.
One of the people campaigning against him says “people see him as a comic character and is unthreatening but everything he stands for his bad.” But the film-makers are content with the comic character idea too, seeking the eccentric aspects while never questioning him about his opinions. Which would be almost forgivable were it very funny, but it isn’t. There are amusing moments. Rees-Mogg has wit, Lady Helena has some decent one-liners, and the children are generally good fun, but there’s no rows or conflict or stand-out set pieces.
The show lacks teeth, and also lacks access: episode one has them toddle off to Boris Johnson’s 60th birthday party, but we don’t follow them. Lacking a ticket we instead sit with their driver in a layby, watching him eat a sandwich.
The trick to these shows is to gain access to a strange new world and create situations where you can enjoy seeing the principal character’s delusions pricked. Clarkson’s Farm works because you have an arrogant and ignorant man constantly being humiliated in his efforts to succeed. Such an idea doesn’t quite work in Meet the Rees-Mogg. At no stage do we see Jacob under pressure as a dad or a man, no rows with the children, no house issues, no relationship meltdowns, no bickering with colleagues; even as he’s losing his seat he’s curiously sanguine about it.
Part of the issue is that the election result was predicted way before the actual election, and Rees-Mogg and everyone around him knew he was doomed. But another aspect is just how laidback Rees-Mogg is. He cheerily waves when people shout at him in the street. When voters tell him they’re going for Reform instead, he nods and says he knows and likes Farage.
We understand that local people want him out, but there’s no particular insight on what impact Rees-Mogg’s politics has had on lives, beyond a cosy idea that they are sick of him because he’s a twit and the Tories are all twits too. Now this might well be how people decide to vote, but it doesn’t make for insightful TV.
The lack of drama may suggest that the Rees-Moggs – at least Lady Helena – are actually all too aware of the risks of reality TV and have made sufficient moves to prevent anything controversial from appearing in the show. Which is fair enough from a family point of view, not great from an entertainment point of view.
In truth, Rees-Mogg is just not that interesting. Not a monster, merely a bit of an enigma.
He is bemused as he loses his seat, not outraged or upset. There is no soul-searching. He’s not too bothered: “One must go on to the next thing.” Of course this comes from privilege: the stakes are not high for him, he’ll be fine, he won’t have to become an Uber driver.
Perhaps in later episodes, post-election, he’ll take up climbing buildings with his bare hands, but from what we can see in the first episodes, he’s a passionless thing, a man who has always had a nice life and always will. Nothing wrong with that, but the great disappointment is that there was a great show in here about the mundanity of Rees-Mogg and his peers, these casually disinterested people who are bred through the system to rule the country.
“He’s an awful, nasty man,” says one woman on the street. Not so. He plays with his children, takes them shopping, shares plenty of jokes. He can be perfectly nice. But how do these nice people become conduits for awful, nasty politics? No answers here.
Meet the Rees-Moggs is on Discovery+ from 2nd December
