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And You Thought Your Neighbours Were Weird...
By Brett Walther
Saturday, September 21, 2002
If you had asked me a year ago, the extent of my knowledge of rocker Ozzy Osbourne was that he tended to bite the heads off of bats while wearing a lot of black eyeliner.
Then came the premiere of MTV's real-life drama The Osbournes, and everything changed.
As the opening credits of the program state, the show stars Ozzy Osbourne as "the Dad". The presentation of a controversial rock star off-stage as a father and family man was odd to say the least, and the PG-13 antics of life in the Osbourne house were like nothing else the innovative-not to mention brave-bunch at MTV had ever produced.
Now, courtesy of CTV, The Osbournes have made their official Canadian debut, and I imagine the media output of all things Osbourne will become as prolific as Ozzy's swearing.
To accompany the launch of The Osbournes on Canadian network television, CTV has created a Canadian home for the family on the Internet at http://www.ctv.ca/generic/WebSpecials/Shows/Osbournes/. There is also a direct link to the site from the CTV home page at http://www.ctv.ca.
Although fairly basic in comparison to MTV's original Osbournes web site at www.mtv.com, the CTV Osbournes site serves as a gentle introduction to the steady stream of mayhem that constitutes life for the family. There are brief bios of each of the family members, as well as an episode guide. Also featured is a fairly detailed history of Ozzy's rise to rock stardom and his complete discography.
There's also an online quiz to test your familiarity with the Osbournes. Do you remember what kind of frozen meat Sharon tossed over the fence during the family's fight with the rowdy yuppie neighbours in Episode 3? Or perhaps more challenging, can you recall how many houses the family has lived in over the past twenty years?
The web site also serves to prepare the public for the show's language and content, with frequently posted warnings citing that the show is not intended for children. Whereas I caught the show during its initial run on American MTV last fall, CTV has made the surprisingly daring decision to run the episodes uncensored. Maybe this time around, without every other word being bleeped out, I'll be able to find out what was going on?
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