‘Stacey & Joe’ follows the couple and their family through the happy – and chaotic – clatter of daily life
In households across the land, Stacey Solomon is beloved beyond measure. Her gentleness when untangling household clutter from knotty feelings in Sort Your Life Out, and her indefatigable cheer that somehow never crosses into triteness have cemented her as a national treasure. Personally, I would happily watch her read the phone book.
In combination with her equally adorable husband, TV personality Joe Swash, the pair are indeed irresistible – so the thinking must have gone when it came to greenlighting their new reality show, Stacey & Joe, on BBC One. Following the couple and their family through the happy clatter of daily life, the question was – do two lovely, fulfilled people make for good television? Answer: sort of.
Juggling five kids at home – one-year-old Belle, three-year-old Rose and five-year-old Rex, plus Stacey’s teenage sons Leighton and Zach – along with ducks, dogs and hectic careers, there is no shortage of action for Stacey & Joe’s cameras to capture. “I don’t know what I’d do if the background ambience of my life wasn’t a crying child,” laughed Stacey. “I’d think I’d gone deaf.”
The couple’s wedding anniversary pushes the show off its narrative starting blocks – Joe delivers Stacey breakfast in bed and dashes out to buy her a present before their extended family pile in for a meal in their beautiful garden. Chaos, sure, but pointedly cheerful. Could the bliss-fest pause long enough to permit friction, something to sink our teeth into?
Thankfully, Stacey & Joe leave room for turbulence and smooth sailing, with an uneven split in cognitive labour causing arguments between the couple – like when Joe’s late return from a fishing trip leaves Stacey juggling childcare with an important meeting. Stacey seems on the edge of tears as her husband sails in five hours behind schedule. “Sometimes Joe doesn’t realise the repercussions,” she says in a cut-away interview. “That meeting was really important to me.”
As the family prepared to go on holiday, the theme resurfaced. With Stacey co-ordinating suitcases for the whole clan, Joe forgets to buy nappies – his one task. “‘You do this on purpose because you’re now going to have to drive to the shops,” said Stacey. “It’s just an excuse for you to leave.”
Making dinner with a baby on her hip and curlers in her hair, Stacey speaks exasperatedly to the camera: “I spend my life thinking, have I done that? Did I remember that? When I come back, I want to be Joe Swash; it’s an easy life.”
While that dash of tension makes Stacey and Joe much easier to sympathise with than the shiny, perfect personas in the show’s first idyllic scenes, the show’s tone remains markedly merry. Fans needn’t worry; the pair are evidently besotted, and the family is loving and functional – even when it is time to be tough. Case in point, when Stacey insists on Zach cleaning up the morning after a party: “Just because there’s people here doesn’t mean I won’t have that argument with you.”
Stacey & Joe will give the couple’s fans all the behind-the-scenes insight they could wish for – and although viewers less enamoured with the show’s titular stars might not be so rapt, they’ll still find plenty to chew on in the couple’s relatable dynamic, their hands-on parenting, and their ongoing efforts to balance family life with careers.
It would be insufferable if the Solomon-Swash’s wholesomeness were insincere – like so much other lifestyle content, calibrated for maximum engagement and envy. But the show makes it seem entirely authentic. As such, the question is whether you think it’s interesting. While that remains to be seen, Stacey & Joe is certainly cosy and diverting, the televisual equivalent of its affable protagonists – for better or worse.
‘Stacey & Joe’ is available to watch on BBC iPlayer