Another "must see."

[Gob]

Television is no stranger to scraping the bottom of the barrel. Cop Rock? The Brady Bunch Variety Hour? Eldorado? Wind on Water? You may not know them all. Google them. And prepare to be afraid. Very afraid.



And then, along comes a show which makes them look collectively like House of Cards.

Meet The Royals.

This is a very fictional drama about a very fictional "British Royal Family". It stars Shane Warne's ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley as Queen Helena, someone called Vincent Regan as someone called King Simon and William Moseley and Alexandra Park as their children, Prince Liam and Princess Eleanor. Helena? Simon? Liam? Eleanor? Where are they getting these names from? They sound like the new family on Neighbours, not the Mountbatten-Windsors.



Chuck in a sneaky uncle - Prince Cyrus, played by Jake Maskall, and a couple of deadbeat cousins, Princess Penelope and Princess Maribal, played by more people you've never heard of, and you've pretty much got the size of it. Oh America, was the Revolutionary War for nothing? As you can imagine, this is not a sweeping historical drama commissioned for a channel like HBO or Showtime, or a streaming service like Netflix or Amazon. The Royals is destined for the E! channel (their exclamation point, not ours).

That's the one away up the dial, where the commercials, the on-air promos, the short-duration packaged clips and the actual television programs are more or less indistinguishable from one another. The series was unveiled at the Television Critic's Association (TCA) press tour in Los Angeles, a programming showcase in which the US television networks, running the alphabetical gamut from A&E to VH1, unveil new programs to the US media. There is little doubt that The Royals is intentionally pure camp, though opinion among US television critics seemed divided between whether it was a show which was so bad it was good, or just a show which is so bad that it's actually wretchedly awful.

Its only salvation is the presence of the magnificent Joan Collins as Queen Helena's mother the Grand Duchess of Oxford, who sweeps in wearing what looks like a knock-off of one of the (real) Queen's favourite brooches, The Jardine Star



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv- ... z3PPGik6RX

[Sue U]

The Royals is destined for the E! channel

I think they mean the "Eeeeeeee! Run away!" channel.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Another show I won't be watching.