The Real Housewives grabbed my hand and dragged me from the pits of lockdown

I sit on the sofa bedraggled: hair (unwashed for six days) in a messy pineapple; dressing gown soiled by the Cadbury’s I dropped down it last week; toenails growing passed the point of justifiability. I scramble for the sticky remote and turn on the television. Lisa Vanderpump is preened to perfection. Wearing a powder pink pussy-bow blouse – Dolce, of course – she clip-clops around her $20m Beverly Hills mansion, aptly-named ‘Villa Rosa’. We’re not in England anymore, Toto.

Since March 2020, I’ve spent most of my time in Gatsby-esque palaces positioned just beneath the Hollywood Sign. Don’t call the cops just yet, though – I haven’t actually been flouting Covid-19 restrictions. The HayU app, brandishing the full Real Housewives franchise, has been transporting me to America with no intrusive PCR test required. The £5 a month subscription fee isn’t a bad travel fare either.

For anyone not indoctrinated into the Real Housewives multiverse, the show documents the lives of several affluent housewives residing in varying regions of the United States – from Salt Lake City to New Jersey to Potomac. While most of the scenes are arguably vapid (at least 20 per cent of each episode is taken up by air kisses), there is more depth to the show than trips to expensive boutiques and high-society parties. Familial love and enduring female friendships give the franchise a heart to melt the icy superficialities.

Each series of the Real Housewives has its own flavour, which is very much dependent on its location. The Atlanta spin-off is known for its authentic drama (which is seldom found in contemporary reality television), the New York housewives’ Pinot Grigio-fuelled antics have to be seen to be believed, and Orange County is the Original Gangster of the Housewives (first airing in March 2006). It was Beverly Hills that got me hooked, though.

As I spent another monotonous day surrounded by the same four walls in April last year, Los Angeles’ sun-soaked, palm tree-lined streets drew me in like a shark to blood. First airing eleven years ago and spanning across the 2010s, the first ten seasons offered me respite from my stagnant little existence in lockdown. The ladies’ glamorous lifestyles and dazzling soirées enabled me to break into not only a pre-coronavirus world, but what felt like a five-star holiday.

The Hollywood backdrop makes this Housewives series all the more fascinating. A hunger for fame and notoriety consumes many of the women, which is perfectly embodied by housewife Kyle Richards’ annual ‘White Party’. Naked ladies, spray painted gold with feathers on their heads, offer margarita cocktails - no salt - at the entrance. The camera always seems to weave its way through the sea of socialites and pan to Paris Hilton (Richards’ niece) or Kris Jenner (Richards’ best friend). On the frivolous dancefloor brimming with Veuve Clicquot, there is not a Covid-19 measure in sight.

During a period in which the average person’s concerns are sickness and mortality, it is comforting to become seriously invested in things that happened years ago and were inconsequential even then. There is a pleasantly numbing quality to watching billionaire heiress, Adrienne Maloof, attempting to prepare a raw chicken by washing it with soap. Or caring about whether Dorit Kemsley gave her chihuahua, Lucy Lucy Apple Juicy, back to the dog shelter. And who the hell leaked cheating rumours about certain ‘house husbands’ to celebrity rag, Radar Online?

This trash has completely enveloped and enraptured me. Coronavirus has turned me into a walking, talking Real Housewives evangelist (which should be listed under ‘side effects’ on the NHS webpage). Having converted many of my nearest and dearest to the show, I now revel in a WhatsApp group dedicated to our love for the ladies. They have become our friends in the hardest of times and in spite of the mindlessness of the show – or perhaps, indeed, because of it – it has become our coping mechanism when Boris Johnson makes yet another distressing announcement.

In the words of celebrity party planner extraordinaire, Kevin Lee: “Beverly Hills, dahling, shishishishishi!”