Ozzy and Ozzie: TV family guys, one tattooed

Ozzy Osbourne is not your father's Ozzie, that 1950s paragon of TV virtue.

Fifty years ago, "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" became an early model of the ubiquitous sitcoms to come. Sweater-wearing former bandleader Ozzie; his equally idealized wife, Harriet; and his handsome sons, David and Ricky, played themselves in scripted stories in which they encountered a few mild stumbles of family life.

Foul-mouthed and cranky, heavy-metal rocker Ozzy Osbourne is far from Ozzie Nelson. And his family Â- wife Sharon and teenagers Kelly and Jack Â- don't look or sound like the Nelsons. But their new TV show, "The Osbournes," has landed the family on the cover of Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly, and become the biggest hit in MTV's history.

"This has managed to become the first post-post-modern or post-post-ironic TV program," says media observer Robert Thompson.

The sitcom era began with shows such as "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" (1952-1966), depicting what Mr. Thompson calls a utopian, picture-perfect family that never really existed. In the 1990s came an ironic response, in shows such as "The Simpsons" and "Roseanne," which turned that model on its ear.

By the turn of the millennium, "There was nowhere left to go; [viewers] were bored," says Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse (N.Y.) University.

In this show, Ozzy isn't exactly the heavy-metal rocker his fans have known for more than 20 years, either. The former front man for Black Sabbath, best known for biting the head off a bat, is seen in this unscripted reality show/sitcom doing mundane things like struggling with a TV remote control and fighting a losing war against family pets who soil the carpet.

Osbourne, a man whose career is devoted to pushing the envelope, "did the most outrageously unpredictable thing of finding himself inside the most predictable unit in our nation, the family sitcom," Thompson says.

At first blush, it may seem that "The Osbournes" glorifies a man whose music has been accused of encouraging teens to kill themselves. But if anything, the fumbling, sometimes incoherent Osbourne is a poster boy for "Don't do what I did, honey." One critic even suggested using subtitles when the ravaged singer speaks.

"To some extent, ["The Osbournes"] is pure calculated opportunism," Thompson says. "This is exactly where we would expect him to end up, because this is the apotheosis of the Ozzy persona. While at first you think, this is so weird, then you suddenly realize we'd gotten tired of Ozzy doing outrageous things."

In 1952, "Ozzie and Harriet" blurred the line between fiction and reality, says Brian Graden, head of programming at MTV. In 2002, so does the equally real-life Ozzy Â- though he's tattooed from head to toe, wears eyeliner and magenta streaks in his hair, bites his pets, and is known as the Prince of Darkness.

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