Warner Bros. Discovery‘s Discovery+ U.K. and Ireland has commissioned a new series focused on the professional and personal life of controversial British politician Jacob Rees-Mogg, titled Meet The Rees-Moggs.
The five-part series, produced by Optomen, promises to “lift the lid on the man behind the public image” by offering exclusive access and fly-on-the-wall insight into Rees-Mogg’s life at home in Somerset, where he lives with his wife and six children.
Rees-Mogg, pegged a “quintessential Englishman” who famously donned a top hat at Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, divided political opinion during his time as a member of Parliament. The Conservative figure was ousted from his seat in the most recent U.K. election which saw a landslide victory for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.
A staunch Brexiteer, Rees-Mogg has become representative of a hard-right position that the conservative Tories have leaned into in recent years. He has repeatedly questioned climate change and voted against a tax on bankers’ bonuses, gay marriage, and abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. In 2022, he suggested that businesses should no longer have to report on the gender pay gap and the speed with which they pay their suppliers. Rees-Mogg has consistently voted for stricter immigration policies and one of his more notorious moments came when he appeared to lie down and fall asleep during a debate in the House of Commons in 2019.
Comparisons will no doubt be made to the inclusion of former Tory Health Secretary Matt Hancock and far-right Reform U.K. leader Nigel Farage on ITV’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! in recent years. Some U.K. viewers have stressed an irresponsibility of giving a platform to “out-of-touch” politicians – Rees-Mogg’s net worth, for example, is estimated to be about £100 million ($128 million) – while others have claimed their “humanization” is important for British democracy.
Meet The Rees-Moggs will follow Rees-Mogg and his wife, Helena de Chair, in the run-up to this year’s general election and the aftermath that follows. The politician said: “Animals, children, an election and a film crew. What could possibly go wrong? This everyday story of Somerset folk is fun to film but may be a bit more Fawlty Towers than Downton Abbey.”
The show will launch on Discovery+ later this year. The series was commissioned by Charlotte Reid for Discovery+ and exec-ed for Warner Bros. Discovery by Deirdre Dowling and Matt Reid. Nick Hornby is the executive producer for Optomen, an All3Media company.
