I've watched every single episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in lockdown

In March, a week after I went to a bar, saw live music and hugged my friends for what would be the last time in months, I invited six new friends into my lounge room, and their arguments and cackles would become the soothing soundtrack to my lockdown.

With a new season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills‌ scheduled to start in April and a clear social calendar for the foreseeable future, I decided to befriend Kyle Richards and her sister Kim, Camille Grammer (then-wife of Frasier star Kelsey), Adrienne Maloof, Taylor Armstrong and Lisa Vanderpump, the namesake and matriarch of my (other) favourite show about terrible people getting into arguments, Vanderpump Rules.

I’d seen enough reality TV shows – including the antipodean spinoffs of Andy Cohen’s Housewives franchise set in Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland – to know that I couldn’t just jump into the new season without first familiarising myself with the women and their personal histories (and feuds). I’m nothing if not a completist.

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Just as the mid-aughts success of The OC inspired the “reality” equivalent Laguna Beach – which spun off into The Hills, which spun off into myriad less-entertaining shows about individual characters – so too did the original season of Real Housewives take its cues from the hugely popular, fictionalised shows Desperate Housewives and Peyton Place. Behind the towering double doors of mega-mansions, we were told, were the wives wealthy men (aside from a few encounters with other women, Housewives are always in heterosexual partnerships) whose friendships and social dealings were much messier than their surface sheen would have you believe.

In Beverly Hills, it’s all done against the backdrop of Hollywood, which makes it all the more insidious and excellent. The Richards sisters, Kyle and Kim, grew up as child stars in the town, and are introduced alongside flashbacks to their roles in Halloween (Kyle), Nanny and the Professor (Kim) and Little House on the Prairie (both), as well as family photos with their nieces, Paris and Nicky Hilton. Camille invites the women to see her husband’s Broadway show during season one, before his affair comes to light and their marriage breakdown becomes a plot point on the show and in the tabloids.

In later seasons, soap stars Eileen Davidson and Lisa Rinna join the cast, along with Garcelle Beauvais (Coming to America) and Denise Richards, whose bitchy eyebrow is as powerful in a talking head confession in 2020 as it was in the films Wild Things, Starship Troopers and Drop Dead Gorgeous.

These women’s careers exist in a vast universe outside of this reality show, which mirrors the joy of consuming Real Housewives. The fun of an empire like this one is in the communal shorthand it breeds in fellow fans: you cannot Housewives alone. During the first socially distanced walk I took with a friend in April, we discussed the latest events in Vanderpump Rules, Summer House and Real Housewives of New York. In the park, we ran into another of my friends who was dying for someone with whom she could debrief on Beverly Hills’ fourth wall-breaking season premiere. From two metres away, I watched these two go from strangers to people with a shared language in minutes.

During this marathon viewing event, I became fluent in the language of Beverly Hills. I saw Taylor Armstrong’s tortured argument that would go on to spawn the “woman yelling at cat” meme. I saw the famed Dinner Party From Hell episode where host Camille referred to a guest who had posed for Playboy following the OJ Simpson trial as “the morally corrupt Faye Resnick”. And, during the same dinner, I watched as Allison DuBois, the real-life inspiration for Patricia Arquette’s character in the scripted drama Medium, puffed on an e-cigarette (in 2010!) and, after throwing back cocktails in frosted martini glasses all night, got into a verbal brawl with Kyle Richards before saying, “I can tell you when she will die, and what will happen to her family. I love that about me!”

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And after that, there were 10 more seasons waiting for me. There’s no time wasted scrolling Netflix for something new to watch when you’re only in season four and the housewives are on their way to Gigi Hadid’s graduation party where they’ll argue over a possibly cursed necklace!

It’s difficult to put my finger on why shows like this are appealing enough to keep me from even considering watching anything else for the past few months (I still haven’t seen Tiger King, but based on the memes I have questions about Carole) because, on paper, they shouldn’t appeal to anyone with a brain or a heart. They paint a picture of women’s lives as consumerist fantasy where collecting more wealth and fame are the ultimate goal and displaying any social or political awareness can brand you an outcast. The highlight in each season is usually a dinner party, trip overseas or cocktail function to launch a boutique/real estate agency/fundraising effort/skincare line/rosé collaboration/dog rescue centre where people scream, dredge up past grudges and point fingers.

Keeping track of these feuds and friendships constitutes the most fun I’ve had in my house all year.

• The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is streaming on HayU