If you are really keen on benchmarks, then The Royals, directed by Priyanka Ghose and Nupur Asthana, produced by the illustrious Pritish Nandy Communications, and streaming on Netflix, can be measured against the number of parties and events that the royal family spends its time hosting attending in inebriated bliss.
In fact, the crumbling haveli, which is supposed to represent their fading glory, is swamped away in a torrent of glamour. As far as I could see, the only real problem the Singh Parivar has is that they have no problems, except for leaky ceilings and broken hearts, nothing that a bit of attending can’t take care of.
Sadly, the attention span of the main players is less than what we would expect from aristocrats (albeit the crumbling kind). There are many generations of royalty in The Royals, if not co-existing then most certainly cohabiting.
Rani Maa (Sakshi Tanwar) seems to be, pardon my French, a bit of a slut. We find her doing hanky-panky with at least two men, Chunky Pandey and Aly Khan, and all her royal shirtless son Fizzy (Ishan Khatter) can do is roll his eyes, and take off his shirt one more time.
Khattar’s Fizzy, like the other “horse guys” he has played earlier (yes he is referred to as a horse guy in The Royals and we aren’t getting into why) is only comfortable when barechested. He even plays polo without his shirt, perhaps hoping the horse would approve and reward him with a winning trot.
Fizzy has a history with the self-willed Sofia (Bhumi Pednekar, charming) a holiday planner for the working-class families who want a taste of royal splendour. Some such ambition also drives the series. It gives us grovelling commoners a peek into royal lives, in and out of their finery, constantly bickering, backbiting and revelling in their fading glory.
It’s all done in a tone of winking jest, not to be taken seriously, unlike some other serials on royalty where we were expected to salute aristocratic excesses and royal debauchery. At least the actor look like royalty, none more so than Zeenat Aman who, I am sorry to say, still can’t act.
The Royals serves up more of a royal rebuke than a tribute. Often, the characters are pulled up for rigorous satire, although they don’t know it (and don’t seem to care). Fizzy for example, with his truckload of arrogance and airs, is a prime target for a dressing down (and we aren’t talking about his shirt-the-fk-up attitude).
More empathetic is Fizzy’s brother, a closet chef Diggy (well played by Vihaan Samat), who longs to break free from his wacked-out royal family.
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Oh yes. There is also Fizzy and Diggy’s closeted sister Jinnie (Kavya Trehan) flirting off and on with Sofia’s female assistant, not quite keen to come out. Not yet. None of the main characters in The Royals is sure of what he or she wants. As they wait for the writers (Neha Veena Sharma, Vishnu Sinha and Iti Agarwal) to make up their minds, the serial plays out like one big glamour jamboree, large swimming pools, larger lounges and largest egos.
Could be a lot of fun if you are in the mood to watch the rich-and-infamous with or without their clothes.
