With almost as much buzz as Kate Middleton‘s second child, The Royals has arrived, and it’s everything you’d expect from a modern day prince or princess.
I’m talking scandal, money and shirtless hotties, of course. So does E!‘s first scripted series deliver? Uh, yeah.
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I was absolutely hooked within the first five minutes. I meant to take notes so I could write my review, but my eyes couldn’t bear to part from the screen.
If you were in high school, like me, when the whole Gossip Girl and Mean Girls craze took over your entertainment life, then you know what TV is lacking. Which is saying something given the tremendous television lineup right now. Still, The Royals seamlessly finds its place among the amazing content that’s out there by fulfilling our teenage scandal needs while also being well-written and not overly acted.
The Royals would fit in just as nicely at The CW as it does at E!, buffered fittingly between episodes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians.
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The show opens with the death of the eldest prince, which means the surviving brother Prince Liam (William Moseley) is thrust into the spotlight as the heir to the throne, while the middle sister Princess Eleanor is now the oldest but far from a role model. She prefers to use her prestige to score drugs and one-night stands.
The drama is only heightened by the family’s grief.
While the children are at play, Queen Helena (Elizabeth Hurley) is wrapped up in a game of her own. Of course, hers is much more political.
And though the pilot serves to merely set the stage for the rest of the show by introducing us to these characters, it’s definitely enough to make me want more.
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Some of my favorite parts from the episode:
- The general consensus that the queen is an “icy bit**.”
- The cousins, who remind me of the twins from A Cinderella Story with Hilary Duff. And don’t even try to act like you don’t love that movie.
- Princess Eleanor’s bad girl attitude. It’s already obvious she’s going to serve to keep the show interesting with a plethora of trouble.
- The music.
- The cliché characters. And it may not make sense at first that that was genuinely one of my favorite parts of the episode, but it’s like the new Cinderella movie. The common girl meets a dashing prince storyline coupled with the king not wanting to be king and thus solidifying his nobility all sets up a nostalgia while bringing those story lines to a modern setting, which helps it to simultaneously feel fresh instead of overdone.
- The show doesn’t take itself too seriously. Instead, it opts for some sarcasm and hilarity that make the would-be cheesy moments royally charming instead.
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