The Osbournes Move In on MTV

The boxes are stacked outside the Beverly Hills home, ready to be carried in. Each is neatly labeled: “pots and pans,” “linens,” “devil heads,” “dead things.”

Plainly, Ozzie and Harriet aren’t moving in.

This Ozzy is Ozzy Osbourne, the heavy-metal rock star, and his family. Their arrival in the neighborhood heralds a hilarious new MTV series, “The Osbournes,” that premieres at 10:30 tonight.

MTV describes it as television’s first “reality sitcom,” a format that suggested itself naturally because nothing they could invent around the Osbournes would be as funny as their actual lives. Just the idea of the Black Sabbath founder, who will forever be known for biting the head off a bat during a 1982 concert, as a family man seems strange. Yet leather and black mascara can be deceiving.

Osbourne, 53, is slightly addled but sweetly funny--and under everything a lot like the put-upon dads you’ve been seeing in television sitcoms for generations.

Watch a bewildered Ozzy fruitlessly try to navigate a satellite TV remote control, begging for help from his 16-year-old son. “I’m stuck on the Weather Channel,” he says. “Arrrggghhh!!”

His wife, Sharon, is a formidable talent manager in her own right who organizes the popular Ozzfest summer concert tours. Expletives appear to be the Osbournes’ favorite form of communication. During the first 30-minute episode, dialogue is bleeped out 59 times. The “South Park” kids would be proud.

Two of the couple’s three children--Jack and 17-year-old Kelly--are featured in the series. A third, older child opted out. Jack’s something of an oddball having trouble fitting in at school. The high-strung Kelly is, like any teenager, appropriately embarrassed by her parents.

There’s trouble with the neighbors, too. The family next door plays music too loud, and it’s driving the Osbournes crazy.