The Real Housewives of Atlanta

It makes sense that The Real Housewives of Atlanta has been one of Bravo’s top-rated series since it premiered in 2008. As the third iteration of Bravo’s still-expanding Housewives franchise, Atlanta had the difficult task of proving it could live up to the success of its Orange County and New York City forebears. It did just that and more, delivering first-rate drama, immaculate shade, and countless meme-able moments. In its sixth season, Atlanta became the first Housewives series to feature an all-Black cast, a group that included longstanding franchise heavyweights Kenya Moore, Kandi Burruss, Porsha Williams, and all-star NeNe Leakes. With 4.63 million viewers, the season’s 14th episode, “Peaches Divided,” which chronicled the explosive fallout from the previous episode’s pajama party-turned-brawl, is still the highest-rated episode in Real Housewives history. The main players of season 6 continued to drive Atlanta to new heights for years, eventually propelling the show to the center of Bravo’s network-wide reckoning with race and inequality in 2020. The Real Housewives of Atlanta’s subsequent season featured what was praised by Vulture as a “uniquely successful reality-TV depiction of the Black Lives Matter movement.” Now in its 14th season, the ladies of Atlanta continue to embody the perfect blend of relatable mess, hysterical humor, and out-of-touch extravagance that has turned the Housewives franchise into a cultural phenomenon. —Megan McCluskey

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