Everything Bravo Announced at Upfronts

This column originally appeared in Brian Moylan’s newsletter, The Housewives Institute Bulletin. Sign up here to be the first to read the next edition.

The upfronts were a huge deal back when I started covering television professionally. (I won’t tell you which year since today is my birthday and I’m feeling old.) It’s when the networks would announce all of their shows for the upcoming fall seasons so that advertisers could see where they wanted to sell their cleaning products, SUVs, and movie trailers on the big television stations. Now that linear television is about as hip as dancing the Charleston, it’s sort of faded in relevance, but leave it to Bravo, which sometimes feels like the last cable channel standing, to turn it into a big deal. Andy Cohen got onstage at Radio City Music Hall on May 11 for the NBCUniversal Upfront and told us about Bravo’s new shows, returning shows, BravoCon, and all sorts of other fun goodies. Here are the highlights for those who don’t work at Clorox, so they didn’t get invited to the upfronts. 

New Shows

The long-rumored Vegas version of Vanderpump Rules is officially here, and it’s called Vanderpump Rules: Lisa Las Vegas. It follows Lisa, her husband Ken Todd, whichever dog Ken is currently carting around town, and, I can only assume, designer Nick Alain as Lisa gets ready to open the Vanderpump Hotel in Vegas. The series will end with the big opening party, including lots of Bravolebs and, considering everyone on the Vulture staff was invited to the opening, plenty of journalists, bloggers, TikTokers, and anyone who has ever posted a Bravo meme. The show is currently billed as a “limited series,” but you know if viewers show up and some of Lisa’s new staff pop off, there will be a season two just in time for the next BravoCon.

The other new show is Secrets, Lies, Texas Wives, and thankfully, that is a working title because, girl, it is a lot of work to say. It’s set in the city of Boerne, Texas, and features a group of wealthy farmers and ranchers who go to church, tote guns, and have illicit affairs. It sounds like the real-world version of Netflix’s hit Hunting Wives. This wouldn’t be the first time that Bravo cribbed from a hit scripted series to make TV. Just look at The Real Housewives of Orange County, which was a combo of Desperate Housewives and The O.C. But its success with that gambit isn’t assured. There was NYC Prep, a reality Gossip Girl, that sadly lasted only one season, and Bravo’s most recent attempt, 2022’s Real Girlfriends in Paris, an Emily in Paris rip-off, which was mort à l’arrivée. However, it’s produced by Spoke Studios, which made Mauricio Umansky’s Buying Beverly Hills, so fingers crossed that it’s good.

Renewals

It shouldn’t be a surprise that The Real Housewives of Rhode Island will be back for a second season, since Andy said at the upfronts that it’s currently Bravo’s second-highest-rated show behind only RHOBH. (Yes, you all thought last season was boring. Yes, you all still watched it.) It is a little surprising that it’s already getting renewed because the beloved Ladies of London: The New Reign still hasn’t gotten picked up for a second season (or, actually, a fifth). A little birdie told me at Vulture’s Reality Masterminds party that they were still mulling it over. Everyone go binge it on Peacock now. We need Martha Lady Sitwell and her pet magpie Hecate on our television screens!

Other no-duh renewals include Below Deck Down Under, Married to Medicine, Southern Charm, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, and Top Chef, which is having its highest-rated season since 2021. In the no-duh-iest of no-duhs, Summer House was also renewed and is having its highest-rated season yet. Hmmm. I wonder why?

Returning Shows

We got to hear the most about Next Gen NYC, which comes back June 24, including the drop of the season-two trailer. It features new cast members Rowan Henchy, Brooke Shields’s daughter, and actor-director Liam Obergfoll, joining the rest of the cast. (Sadly, not my OnlyFans favorite Dylan Geick. Boo-hoo.) We also get cameos from Brooke Shields; Ava Dash’s mother, Rachel Roy, who was absent from season one; and Ben Mandelker and Ronnie Karam from Watch What Crappens.

The return of McBee Dynasty: Real American Cowboys, the show about a crazy ranching family that is essentially real-life Yellowstone and should be a great companion to The Show About Texas Wives That Needs a Better Title (working title), is also imminent. It might even get some new attention now that one of the stars, Steven McBee Jr., was in the midst of a scandal when his ex, Allie Eklund, released texts he sent calling her a “slut,” “whore,” and “hooker.”

Here’s a schedule for when everything will be back for the summer: 

• June 8: Below Deck Mediterranean
• June 15: McBee Dynasty
• June 24: Next Gen NYC
• July 9: The Real Housewives of Orange County
• Aug 9: Ultimate Girls’ Trip: Roaring 20th

Bravocon

As expected, it will be back in November 2027 in Vegas, officially making it an every-two-years kinda thing. (Thank the Catholic Jesus because I can’t be schlepping to Vegas every single year, even if LVP does have a hotel there.) For those craving the Bravo experience IRL, this year, Bravo Fan Fest will go to Charleston, South Carolina, with four tapings of WWHL on October 22 and 23 and a one-day convention on October 24. Tickets for the Fest go on sale June 11 and are $475 (plus fees) for general admission and $755 for VIP. At those prices, they’d better include a lap dance from the Southern Charm/Hospitality gentleman of your choice. Tickets for WWHL go on sale June 12 and start at $150 (plus fees). Daddy Moneybags Vulture III better reach into those deep pockets of his, because I want to attend all of it.

Ciara Miller–related News

On the same day as the upfront, Peacock also announced that Ciara Miller, the victim of Bravo’s latest cheating scandal, will be pulling an Ariana Madix and decamping to Love Island. She’ll be co-hosting Love Island USA: Aftersun, the Saturday aftershow for the popular series that looks over the week’s events and interviews eliminated contestants. She’ll be presenting with Tefi Pessoa and taking over for Maura Higgins, the former co-host who, like Ciara, was on The Traitors and will be a contestant on the next season of Dancing With the Stars. But what about Summer House? There’s a bit of confusion whether the new Love Island gig, which films in Fiji, will screw up her summer in the Hamptons. This year, Love Island premieres on June 2 on Peacock, and last year the show wrapped by mid-July, so it seems feasible given that Summer House traditionally starts filming July 4. TMZ reported that she would do both, but after Ciara posted on Threads (threaded?), “TMZ doesn’t know shit about me,” the outlet changed its headline from “will do” to “is able to.” The one thing we know for sure is, with Love Island USA, Summer House, and Dancing With the Stars on the horizon, she’s going to be exhausted by Christmas.

Non–Ciara Miller–related News

A Bravo announcement that might be getting a little overlooked with everything else is the announcement that Bravo is investing in the cutting-edge world of vertical microdramas — you know, the stories that everyone is watching on TikTok and other social media. (Quibi, you were really ahead of your time.) It’s starting with two that will both be available on the Peacock mobile app. The first is Salon Confessionals With Madison LeCroy, where the Southern Charm star gives someone a full hairstyle while they share insane stories about their life. I’m already hooked. The second is Campus Confessional: Miami (working title, but still better than the Texas one), which sounds basically like a Bravo show about a group of college students, but it’s just broken up into little pieces. Curiously, it stars Georgia Gay, Heather Gay’s middle daughter who is at the University of Miami.

Amazon Prime is getting into the slipstream of all of this Bravo news to officially announce Reality Retreat (working title, but can’t we get a title that isn’t working at all, an unemployed title or something?). We’ve mentioned it in the newsletter before, and it features a bunch of reality stars at a tropical resort focused on “healing, accountability, and transformation.” The cast includes Margaret Josephs, Kenya Moore, Kim Zolciak-Biermann (working title), and The Valley’s Brittany Cartwright. Margaret, Kenya, and Kim are all officially off Bravo, so I understand this move, but Brittany is still on the network. She must really need the money. Joining them are Selling Sunset’s Christine Quinn, reality vet Tamar Braxton, former Bachelorettes Kaitlyn Bristowe and Jenn Tran, faux Spanish citizen Hilaria Baldwin, and MAGA favorites Julie and Savannah Chrisley.