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Made in Chipping Norton Reality TV comes to the Cotswolds. Oh, how jolly!
The Observer
|April 20, 2025
Our obsession with the filthy-rich finds fresh fuel as countryside celebrities get ready for close-ups of their stately piles, writes television critic Barbara Ellen
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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 proposed for the series include 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.
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 Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper's Rivals with the ongoing Brit obsession with the generationally wealthy.
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