Ladies of London

[DaytimeFan]

A bit late to this one but what a beautiful property - most unusual to have a townhouse that wide in prime South Kensington. 

[j swift]

At one point, Caroline Fleming's Dutch reality show was on YouTube. 

It was wild!.  The premise was that female heirs had only recently been given access to heredity rights to property, so Caroline was given her family's estate and began renovations.  The first few episodes were a mix between HGTV and Martha Stewart with a focus on renovations in the kitchen, and Caroline cooking with produce from her garden. 

Then, it takes a turn.

One imagines that there was a push to make it more entertaining, so Caroline is portrayed as more of an out of touch princess a la Paris Hilton.   She wears Chanel on the worksite and argues with her husband about the budget. 

Until, there's an episode where she invites a famous sports star to play with her kids.  I think he was a soccer player, but I'm not sure.  As it turns out, in real life, she began an affair with the sports guy, her husband found out and divorced her which was a quite a scandal, that was only briefly touched upon during her time on LOL.

A little wiki/google reveals that many of the ladies had much more interesting backstories that were barely discussed on the show.    Julie Montagu's husband, the Earl, had a tragic history of drug use that resulted in a stroke.  I often thought that her story about being confused as an American amongst the Brits was fake because they were married for more than a decade when she was on the show. Anabelle married a Rothchild, and one of the stipulations of her divorce was that she never mentioned their name in the press.  She also dated Lord Churchill.  Marissa Hormer's husband Matt was accused of fraud and drug smuggling within his nightclubs.  And, of course, S1 Nicole Reno's husband Scot died under very mysterious circumstances.

One tends to think that Bravo didn't know how to exploit those stories properly...

 

[Cat]

It's the most beautiful townhouse on its straight (with green leaves covering its brick facade), and I love love love how she decorated the interiors. Truly a dream property in London.

A lot of this history would have been great if eventually discussed on the show (obviously Annabelle couldn't mention the R word). I had heard the gossip about Marissa's husband's clubs. However, even without these stories, I thought Ladies of London was a great show, and could stand on its own when it came to these ladies' interactions with each other. Like Marissa and Juliet's eroding friendship, or Caroline and Sophie's. But yeah, the LOL were incredibly well-connected.