No one was expecting The Royals to be a thought-provoking, Emmy-winning drama. E! is known as the network that brought us the Kardashians and endless red-carpet arrivals. It had yet to dive into the world of TV drama series. How were they supposed to compete with ABC and NBC, who had been successfully doing these shows for years? The answer: The Royals.  E!’s first scripted series, “The Royals,” started with a bang.

Created by “One Tree Hill’s” Mark Schwahn, it is so dependent on popular tween-age trends, from the Kardashians to “Twilight,” it seems genetically engineered.

Elizabeth Hurley plays Queen Helena as a bitter mom whose favorite son recently died. Impeccably groomed with the vocabulary of a social media troll, she spends most of her non-primping time criticizing her children’s sex lives, telling her husband (the actual monarch) to man up, and reminding everyone within a 10-mile radius who she is. The rest of the household members are equally familiar to fans of  the royal life. We meet the smart but depressed Princess Eleanor (Alexandra Park), who spends most of her time in clubs or with guys. Her twin brother, Liam (William Moseley), does the same things but has more of a moral compass than his sister. Liam’s love interest is a young woman (Merritt Patterson) is named Ophelia, who looks as much like Kate Middleton as the casting crew could find, and turns out to be the daughter of the head of palace security. The family is  brought together by the shocking death of young Prince Robert, which throws the household into various stages of grief and sets up Liam to inherit the crown.

The show is consumed with drinking, boys, and drugs, none of which are too flattering; but the idea of following a royal family around has a draw to it. The story tells a different side, a side of a TV show where not everything turns on the way it’s supposed to. A side where a bodyguard has a relationship with both the queen and the princess.

Despite the unflattering plots that evolve, it’s enough to keep you interested and engaged. I wouldn’t recommend anybody younger than in high school for this show; but for older teenagers, it is a great show.