I felt slightly anxious for Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg when I read he’d agreed to have a reality show made about his family by an American television channel. I imagine most people’s reaction on hearing this was to think: ‘Are you stark raving bonkers?’ But as someone who’s appeared in several reality shows and been followed around by a BBC camera crew for a fly-on-the-wall documentary, I don’t think this was necessarily a mistake. It all depends on how the Rees-Moggs are portrayed, and while I doubt they’ll be able to control that – being given ‘final cut’ on such programmes is a rarity – they should be able to influence it.
Half the fun will be watching the posh Rees-Moggs trying not to say anything snobbish
The first thing Jacob and his family must realise is they’re not appearing in a documentary, but a drama. It’s obvious to anyone who spends five minutes watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians that the ‘reality’ being documented is actually a series of intersecting narratives revolving around the cast and their romantic relationships, creating a kind of soap opera. And these narratives are scripted by the programme makers. Not in the sense that their words are written for them, although I imagine they’re heavily prompted. What I mean is, the producers will have a clear idea of what each character’s ‘story’ is and that will dictate what they choose to film and, more importantly, how to assemble the resulting footage. That sounds scary, as if Jacob, his wife Helena and their six children will just be meat puppets, assigned different roles in a story the producers won’t want to deviate from.
To a certain extent that’s true, but the Rees-Moggs can take some comfort from the fact that the ‘arc’ given to each ‘character’ will be the standard hero’s journey in which they’re assigned a commonplace psychological ‘wound’, such as lacking self-confidence, then presented with a series of challenges they’ll have to overcome and, in the process, discover inner strengths that will enable them to ‘heal’. If you watch the original Star Wars movie and pay attention to Luke Skywalker’s character you’ll get the idea. This ‘journey’ is the standard dramatic arc across the entire entertainment industry and Meet the Rees-Moggs won’t be any different.
I imagine Jacob is well aware of this. No doubt the climax of episode one will be him losing his seat and the line he quoted from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in his departure speech – ‘From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success’ – sets up his arc perfectly for the rest of the series. Essentially, it will be about how this failure teaches him something about himself that enables him to become an even more successful politician than he was before.
But he should realise that the programme makers won’t be interested in his analysis of what the Conservative party got wrong in the past 14 years and how it should respond to the rise of Reform. Rather, they’ll want him to acknowledge his shortcomings as the MP for North East Somerset and Hanham, something that may be difficult for him. He’ll have to engage in a bout of self-reflection – ‘I may have been too emotionally distant from my constituents’ – and then redeem himself by undergoing some trial by fire. The climax of season five will be a new, touchy-feely Jacob taking his old seat back from Labour in 2029.
Helena Rees-Mogg’s story will probably mirror that of her husband’s, with the producers encouraging her to indulge in more ‘me time’ – facials, spas, etc. She’ll be prodded to tell Jacob she feels under-appreciated and he will respond by offering to take the children to the local country fair and do the washing up. This storyline will climax with ‘date night’ in which the little Rees-Moggs prepare a candlelit meal for their parents, with a subplot involving the children realising they’re unconsciously replicating toxic gender stereotypes, with poor Mary having to do the cooking and Peter acting as head waiter. This sequence will end with Peter helping his father with the washing up.
I’m exaggerating, but only a little. The formula for these series rarely changes. Half the fun will be watching the posh Rees-Moggs trying not to say anything snobbish as they’re shoehorned into this plebeian template. I don’t doubt they’ll succeed in biting their tongues, which is important because they don’t just need to win over the public, but the producers as well. The secret of coming out well is to charm those making the programme. If you can get them to like you, they’ll be kinder in the edit suite. I have no doubt Sir Jacob and family will have little difficulty on that front.
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