Television series

Keeping Up with the Kardashians

Name: Keeping Up with the Kardashians
Genre: Drama
Released: 2007
Cast: Khloé Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kylie Jenner

Family drama

The show that accidentally made fame itself a product. Fourteen seasons of the Kardashian-Jenner family navigating relationships, business ventures, and each other with cameras permanently present. It's partly genuine chaos, partly constructed narrative, entirely addictive if you surrender to it. For people who find human behaviour fascinating and aren't too precious about spectacle.

TVMaze rating

1.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy reality television that works like a long, unscripted soap, where the pleasure is watching a famous family bicker, scheme and reconcile across two decades of ordinary life.

Skip it if you want a show with a plot, a narrative arc or any real stakes beyond interpersonal friction, since most episodes are small domestic squabbles stretched across an hour.

What it asks of you: Twenty seasons and roughly 270 hour-long episodes, so it asks for patience and an appetite for slow accumulation rather than a single sitting.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills2010

Richer, meaner, older women in the same ecosystem. Sharper conflicts, more alcohol-fuelled confrontations, and the fascinating nightmare of wealth without the Kardashian family's digital-native savvy.

But It's exhausting. The drama is real but repetitive—the same arguments cycle through different seasons, and some cast members are genuinely difficult to spend time with.

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills poster

Love Island2019

Distils the Kardashian formula to its essence: attractive people in an artificial environment, romance, conflict, and manufactured stakes. Much faster-paced and designed to create weekly talking points.

But The whole thing is engineered for viral moments rather than character depth. If you want actual stakes or genuine feeling, this won't deliver it.

Married... with Children1987

The anti-sitcom that proved a show about a dysfunctional family could anchor on shamelessness and dark humour. It normalised behaviour television wanted to punish and discovered an audience hungry for that permission.

But It's genuinely crude in ways that feel dated now. Some of the jokes land flat because the culture has moved—not always morally, but at least strategically.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Keeping Up with the Kardashians

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Grey Gardens1976

Both show privilege as a kind of performance and both ask whether we should be watching. But where KUWTK answers 'yes, and everyone is complicit,' Grey Gardens answers 'maybe not—look what it costs them.'

A documentary about two wealthy, isolated women and their decaying mansion that functions as a Rorschach test for American excess. Intimate, unsettling, and genuinely tragic—it's what happens when the camera stays long enough to see the cost.

But It's genuinely depressing and slow. The women at its centre are struggling with mental illness and poverty-adjacent delusion, and the film doesn't soften that or explain it away.

The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On2022

Reality TV that treats relationship collapse as the entire point. No celebrities, just people who agreed to publicly destroy their partnerships for Netflix money. It's fascinating and deeply unpleasant.

But It's cruel. Watching this requires accepting that you're enjoying other people's documented emotional wreckage, which some viewers find too far.

Succession2018

Family wealth and dysfunction at the highest level, but with HBO's budget and theatre-trained actors. Scripted but genuinely exploring the moral rot that money creates. Infinitely smarter about the psychology of fame and power.

But It's dark and claustrophobic in a way designed to make you uncomfortable. There's no victory, no growth, no learning—just decay, and some people find that nihilistic rather than compelling.

Million Dollar Listing: New York2012

Focuses the family-drama formula onto real estate agents selling eight-figure homes. Lower stakes emotionally but higher stakes financially, with genuinely absurd properties and people you believe are terrible.

But The repetition is brutal. Every episode follows the exact same structure, and after a few hours you'll realise nothing of actual value happens.

Summer House2017

Bravo's attempt to replicate the Kardashian formula with cast members slightly less famous and slightly more drunk. It's messier and more unpredictable because the stakes for these people are lower.

But The cast turns over constantly, which means you're always relearning relationships and allegiances. Commitment to one group is basically impossible.

Gossip Girl2007

Both understand that modern wealth is inseparable from being watched. Both treat transparency as both commodity and weapon. But Gossip Girl has the advantage of being able to end—KUWTK just stops.

Aired the same year as KUWTK but from the scripted side of the fence. Fictional but emotionally real about wealth, status anxiety, and the performance of identity in permanent public view. Smarter about narrative than reality TV can be.

But It's built on plot mechanics that strain credibility even within its own logic. Once the mystery engine stalls, you're left with soapy character work that doesn't always justify itself.

The Decline of Western Civilization1981

Both are anthropological records of how people construct identity for cameras and for each other in a specific city at a specific moment. But Decline shoots from inside the culture rather than above it, and it's the difference between a member of the tribe and a tour guide.

A documentary about the Los Angeles punk scene that treats its subjects as artists and people first, spectacle second. Penny Marshall's documentary instinct treats her subjects' choices as serious and their self-presentation as meaningful, even as she doesn't hide their contradictions.

But It's formally unmodern and sometimes feels sloppy. The sound design is rough and the editorial choices are sometimes baffling, which can feel like a lack of craft rather than an aesthetic choice.