♦Hal Boedeker: Osbournes have a wacky TV travelogue.
Ozzy Osbourne’s wonder, confusion and skill enliven “Ozzy & Jack’s World Tour,” an offbeat travelogue that dispenses diverting history lessons.
The Black Sabbath singer and son Jack are presented as “history nerds” in the 10-part reality series, which debuts at 10 tonight on History. The series gives Ozzy subtitles, a helpful touch for viewers.
The Osbournes are keen to learn new things, accept unusual challenges and go places from Roswell and Mount Rushmore to Sun Studio and Stonehenge.
Yet the series should please fans of the “Osbournes” reality series because father and son remain impudent, fun-loving and often
bleeped.
The premiere is built around a trip to Jamestown, Va., the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. Before that, the
Osbournes stop at the Virginia Museum of Military Vehicles and drive a tank; they visit Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s left arm, which was buried separately from his body; and they experience Colonial Williamsburg, where they shoot at a new gun range and try on wigs. Ozzy marvels that a big, white wig makes him look like Elton John.
Of Jamestown, Ozzy shows an eerie fascination with the cannibalism of early settlers, who dug up corpses and ate them. When Jack hears that one man had his wife salted, he concludes that the hubby made jerky out of her.
The second hour takes in the Johnson Space Center and the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston. The show revisits the legend of whether Ozzy in 1982 urinated on the Alamo. (Fun fact: Singer Phil Collins is an Alamo expert.)
At the space center, they tour mission control, drive a $5 million rover, try on spacesuits (Ozzy says he feels like a penguin) and send a message to the International Space Station. They meet astronaut Shannon Walker. When Ozzy wonders about romance in space, she quickly tells him that it’s a workplace.
The Osbournes draw crowds at the Texas State Capitol in Austin and at the Alamo in San Antonio. Ozzy frets about the Alamo before learning happy news.
Ozzy often looks dazed, but he pulls himself together when a challenge arises. The delightful “Ozzy & Jack” takes you places you never knew you wanted to go.