The Royals (Neon), Elizabeth Hurley's latest piece of light entertainment (post Shane Warne's hair), is trash of the highest order. It's terrible in the way that a sickly tart is terrible. Bad for you but addictive.
And very tarty.
"Let me recap my week for you," sighs Hurley, playing a Barbie-like Queen of England. She's talking to her husband, the King, and sitting against an ornate bedhead in a sexy black teddy. (Seeing her in lingerie seems to be a recurring theme.)
"My daughter's vagina is on the cover of no less than four tabloids, my first-born was killed, my husband announced he wants to abolish the only life I've ever known and his footmen nearly saw my ... "
I'll leave that last word to your imagination. The script leaves about as much as Hurley's infamous safety-pin dress. But then, The Royals is designed as a sort of outrageous ode to the royal family, only without the duty, the decorum or the dogs.
In their place? Drugs, mostly snorted by their daughter, Princess Eleanor, a sulky troublemaker whose bodyguards - and clothing choices - don't seem to guard her body one bit. She's played by Aussie actor Alexandra Park, who not only bears a striking resemblance to Hurley, she tends to outshine everyone in the cast. That includes William Moseley as her twin, Prince Liam, who is casually dating his head of security's daughter, Ophelia, much to the Queen's chagrin. He's also up for a bit of crowd-surfing at public events.
So yes, it's all sex and scandal, set to a modern soundtrack (minus Lorde, which would have been the ultimate coup). The poor old king has obviously seen so much of each, he's resigned to nonchalantly acknowledging that substances do the rounds at the dinner table.
Liz Hurley heads a family of raunchy royals as Queen Helena in The Royals. Photo / Supplied
The show's tone lurches between the melodramatic and knowingly ridiculous. Or "ridick" as one of the dim young trollops who shows up at the palace might call it. It's probably no coincidence the stepsisters look like Fergie's daughters. Given the show's naughty streak, and the fact that it tries a bit too hard to have a twinkle in its eye, I wouldn't be surprised if Fergie herself had written it.
In fact, the show was created by One Tree Hill producer Mark Schwahn for the E! Channel, which explains the lashings of teen angst. "FML!" cries the Princess on social media among a few other unprintable exclamations. But while it has plenty of the upper-class mockery that made Gossip Girl such a hit, and a manipulative Blair Waldorf character in the Princess, it's more crass than clever.
The costumes have a whiff of gypsy wedding about them and, so far, the characters are one-dimensional, leaving most of the dastardly behaviour to the queen and her bratty daughter.
The second episode (I couldn't help myself) shows she'll get her comeuppance, as her new bodyguard blackmails her by videoing her night of excessive partying. Considering what has been on the covers of the tabloids, you'd think she wouldn't care. But that wouldn't do much for the sordid plot. Or the so-bad-it's-good dialogue.
"Your daughter was rolling balls in the state dining room," says the King to his scantily dressed Queen. "Now she's stoned and eating the Prime Minister's pie."
