ShareThisThey're ba-aack.
Four years after their 2002-05 MTV series "The Osbournes" ended, the first family of celeb-reality TV returns to prime time with a Fox variety show of sorts.
The first of six episodes airs Tuesday at 9 p.m. EDT, but rather than airing subsequent episodes in the weeks that follow, the network is billing "Osbournes Reloaded" as a series of specials. Airdates for additional episodes have not been announced.
At a January press conference, Jack and Kelly Osbourne said they were glad for the time away from the spotlight.
"We needed to take time off, especially Jack and I, to discover who we are and what we really wanted to do because we were so young when we started," said Kelly Osbourne, now 24 and recently out of rehab.
"People have always been like, 'When are the Osbournes getting back together?' " said Jack, 23. "It just felt like the right progression for us."
In "Osbournes Reloaded," which Fox did not make available for review, the Osbournes -- Ozzy, Sharon, Kelly and Jack -- are filmed in front of a live studio audience involved in extreme competitions, unveiling a stripper grandmother and introducing "The Littlest Osbournes," where the family is portrayed by pint-sized, potty-mouthed British children.
Just don't call it a "variety show."
"That word frightens us," Kelly said. "The way that we see that it's a variety show is that there's a variety of different things. ... We're not going to be Sonny-and-Chering it."
Executive producer Cecile Frot-Coutaz said the mix will include audience-participation games and fish-out-of-water, culture clash segments where the Osbournes go on the road and meet Americans named Osbourne.
"The glue to it all is the family and their take on these situations and their personal dynamic and their edge," Frot-Coutaz said.
"We've got a very disturbed, dysfunctional family doing a very dysfunctional show," boasted Sharon.
Mike Darnell, president of alternative entertainment at Fox, described "Osbournes Reloaded" as "fun raunch."
"It's nothing offensive," he said, "but it's really fun to watch."
Viewers will make up their own minds about that -- on both counts.
(Contact TV editor Rob Owen at rowen(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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