Rosie O’Donnell tried it. Wayne Brady tried it. Even Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey tried it.
But since about 1978, when “The Carol Burnett Show” went off the air, no variety show, once a staple of prime-time programming, has succeeded on network TV.
So who better to bring it back than Ozzy Osbourne and his family? Yes, that Ozzy Osbourne, the bat-biting former Black Sabbath vocalist who once sang such songs as “War Pigs” and “Paranoid.”
The Osbournes — Ozzy; his wife, Sharon; and their children Jack and Kelly — gave a glimpse of “Osbournes Reloaded” (set for a spring debut on Fox) during a session at the Television Critics Association’s January press tour.
A highlight clip looked . . . er, interesting. The Osbournes play pranks on audience members; they put on blindfolds and try to guess who a celebrity is, a la “What’s My Line?”; and, yes, they sing. Well, Ozzy and Kelly do, anyway.
There’s also a bit where two child actors play Ozzy and Sharon as kids trying to get into an R-rated movie. And yes, the children are bleeped.
Sharon had a gig as a judge on “America’s Got Talent,” and Ozzy has appeared in a series of amusing cellphone commercials. But Jack and Kelly haven’t been seen much on TV since “The Osbournes,” which set off a flood of “celeb-reality” series, ended in 2005.
“We needed that time to take off to discover who we are and what we really want to do,” Kelly Osbourne said. “When (Fox and FremantleMedia) came to us with this idea, we just thought it’s something new and different and, yes, it’s a risk, but why not?”
Fox reality chief Mike Darnell said Fremantle’s interest piqued his own interest. (Fremantle is the company behind “American Idol.”)
“Because of that, I thought there was something that I hadn’t seen in a few years,” Darnell said. “It’s almost like, (the Osbournes) are fine individually but together, terrific.”
It remains to be seen, of course, whether a family as unconventional as the Osbournes clicks on broadcast TV, even though they had a niche cable hit. Onstage, Sharon and Ozzy still had the kind of chemistry that could make a show like this work.
She frequently had to turn to him to repeat critics’ questions. But after she said, “Everybody adores Ozzy,” he piped up.
“There was nobody that adored me when I was (expletive) drunk all the time,” he muttered.
“You see how he hears what he wants to?” she said. “He has selective hearing.”
