The Royals

Netflix’s new steamy series tries very hard to play on the sexual undercurrent between its two leads—Ishan Khatter and Bhumi Pednekar—but the pressure to look vibe-worthy all the time hampers its chances. However, it’s breezy and enjoyable for the most of it, and gives viewers a nice binge time. A fierce new-age CEO Sophia Shekhar (Bhumi) and a modern-day prince Aviraaj (Ishaan) meet by chance and their frenemy phase begins. They need each other for financial reasons but their functioning styles demand a lot of tweaking. The physical attraction between them is also strong and that only complicates the proceedings. The Royals delivers what you can easily anticipate—a fading palace, hard to maintain lifestyle and the immediate need of money, and then some more money. Sprinkle this with bare body princes and tall horses with a lot of kissing, and you would get more or less the entire run time of The Royals.

Sophia, a CEO, clashes with a reluctant prince Aviraaj while trying to turn their struggling palace into a BnB, sparking an attraction despite their differences. Amidst a sabotaged pitch, a palace photo shoot, and a royal ball where Aviraaj avoids his ex and Jinnie finds romance, their connection deepens. Turning a king, he learns a shocking secret, only for a fundraiser to reveal more family truths. It’s surprising how Ishan Khatter goes about his choices – from the big-scale fantasises to earthy indie films – making him unpredictable as a performer. While Aviraaj as a character may be one-dimensional, he tries to make something out of it, without interfering with the creator’s approach. Bhumi Pednekar is impressive, but appears in autopilot mode with her performance, which works on a surface level, though it doesn’t strike a chord.

The Rajkumar and the Aam Kumari. He is royalty, she is middle-class. He rides horses on the beach, sculpted bare chest a-gleam. She’s shiny too, but more from the plebeian pursuit of running. Cool tracks, though, and very sculpted too, but of course, chalk and cheese. Aviraaj Singh (Ishaan Khatter) and Sophia Kanmani Shekhar (Bhumi Pednekar) spark, clash, part, meet again. You know the drill; classic rom com territory. Add in big baubles and bigger palaces, , a phalanx of princes and princesses, and the full Rajasthan rajasi retinue, with the the constant flurry of hukum, khammaghani, leheriya headgear, in place.

Netflix’s The Royals, the series about royalty and their way of life, is a fitting example of everything wrong with the streamer. The new eight-episode show is evidence of its cautious programming and the tendency of backing projects where actors are seen more chilling by the pool than uttering lines, and shot changes are excuses for wardrobe revamps. The Royals is a hallowed congregation of abysmal writing and disinterested filmmaking, and the union is specifically designed to make only one unit suffer: the audience. On paper, it is tempting to like something like The Royals. The stakes are constantly low, and the premise is as far-removed from reality as credible information is from major news studios in India. The aesthetic is pleasing to the eye (the neon-lit colour grading of Netflix, finally, takes a back seat) and the superfluity of the setting is a far cry from the real-life based template-driven true crime shows that have clogged every pore of the streamer’s slate. The triviality also calls for a leeway in expectations that, ideally, should serve a show like this.

A reluctant heir to the gaddi, an ambitious CEO of a hospitality startup — sparks fly when they meet. For most parts, ‘The Royals’, touted as a romcom, is expectedly a love story between a blue-blooded heir and a commoner. Only, this aam kumari, to borrow from the series lingo, is no Cinderella. In fact, the so-called ordinary mortal Sophia Kanmani Shekhar (Bhumi Pednekar) is extraordinary and spunky. Winner of the Entrepreneur of the Year Award, she dresses more nattily than royals do. She bumps into her prince annoying Aviraj Singh (Ishaan Khatter) in the very first scene and though attraction is palpable, they soon fall out.

If you’ve followed Hindi web shows long enough, you’ll know that “fun & frothy” is streaming lingo (and euphemism) for “empty, expensive, glossy, puerile, performative and garishly produced young-adult-but-Bollywood-scale entertainment”. It’s a very specific subgenre of designer nothingness — the storytelling equivalent of a brown mannequin at a MET gala whose theme is ‘Sexy and Flawed’. Think Four More Shots Please!, Eternally Confused and Eager for Love, Mismatched, Jee Karda, Call Me Bae and now, The Royals: a series so frothy and stretched that a dust storm wrecked my room, the wifi broke, I fell violently ill and a war broke out in the real world during its 8-episode run.