The Royals: appalling television or addictively trashtastic?

A new drama that starts this evening and depicts a fictional British royal family led by Elizabeth Hurley as the Queen has been described as a "televisual apocalypse" by critics.

Creator Mark Schwan, the man behind teen drama One Tree Hill, insists it is about "a" royal family rather than "the" royal family, but the show is already being dubbed The Real Housewives of Buckingham Palace.

The Queen's husband King Simon (Vincent Regan) is considering an end to the monarchy, while the heir to the throne has died, thrusting his playboy brother Prince Liam (William Moseley) into the role. His twin sister Princess Eleanor (Alexandra Park) is a reckless tabloid-bating reprobate and the King's sexual predator of a brother Cyrus (Jake Maskall) has his eyes on the throne.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Sean O'Grady at The Independent says "words can't express" how bad The Royals is, but he gives it a try anyway. "Imagine the very worst of Hollyoaks, Crossroads and Dynasty, and you're getting closer to this regal televisual apocalypse," he says. "The Royals, as our own dear Prince of Wales might conclude, really is appalling."

Nancy Dewolf Smith at the Wall Street Journal describes it as a "trashy soap opera that's not bad enough to be funny". She suggests it is also "casually cruel" that two characters are recognisably based on the princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, although says the "Absolutely Fabulous" style depiction takes the sting off.

"Getting rid of an overall slimy feeling after each episode of the series ends may not be so easy," she says.

Alessandra Stanley at the New York Times says it "should be hoot but it actually gets old, and dull, very quickly".

The problem is that it veers too far from the real thing, she says. "What's missing is tension between the public mask and private predilections, the dissonance between noblesse oblige and unlimited privilege," says Stanley.

But other critics point out that it is showing on US television network E!, home of Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Fashion Police, and could therefore prove "addictively trashtastic" to its target viewers.

"Having the cheeky foresight to fictionalise the royal family as some modern British incarnation of Dynasty, and then casting Elizabeth Hurley as the queen and Joan Collins as the queen's mum to boot? Give credit where it's due: The Royals nails its audience," says the Kevin Fallon at the Daily Beast.

The series thrives on its sound bites and offers a clever commentary on power and status in the age of social media, he says. "But most of all, it's fun."

• The Royals airs at 9pm on E! from 25 March