The Palace

'The Palace' is a series that takes place in a fictionalised royal family not so unlike our own; a young king thrown unexpectedly to the throne and who resembles George VI; his sister is a ringer for Princess Margaret, and there are a batch of partying young royals to boot. An ensemble cast also features many of the palace staff, and the tone of the program is somewhere between 'Drop the Dead Donkey' and 'House of Cards', as it follows the ambitions and intrigue surrounding this substantial collection of characters. It's all believable stuff, yet somehow not very interesting: the comedy element is obvious and just not that funny, while the more serious side of the drama fails to engage, the royal family has already lost so much of its mystique that it's hard to feel anything real is at stake in the political games. Stepehen Frears' film 'The Queen', another obvious template, was such fun because of the way it imaginatively interpreted real events and people; but in 'The Palace', none of the made-up royals have sufficient depth to flesh out the plot beyond a skeleton outline. In the end, it's neither subversive or revealing, and fails to contain anything that might not have been predicted; neither true sitcom not true satire, 'The Palace' aims high but ultimately, appears to have nothing of substance to say.

I don't know where to begin with how bad this show is, ITV has always struggled to compete in the drama stakes against the established quality of the BBC and the indie hipness of Channel 4, the unloved middle child with only the rare gem in the past decade. The palace however is a new low, From the poor acting and directing to the abysmal dialogue and plotting. ITV has never been well acquainted with reality in its Drama, (aside for when Paul Greengrass feels charitable towards the channel) the Bill is as about as far removed from actually policing in the UK as possible, But the Palace takes this to new depths, as it tries to depict the King actually having real power in what is largely a well paid ceremonial role. They have been many comparisons made to the West Wing, and while it is true they are both political dramas, its like Comparing Paul W.S Anderson to Steven Spielberg there both directors, And as with that comparison they really is nothing to compare one is superbly acted directed and brilliantly written by Aaron Sorkin.

If i was forced to watch this again i would seriously consider chewing through my own wrists to escape into what ever life is after this. If your desperate for British Political Drama buy House of cards on DVD, and if you like good Drama avoid the Palace like the Plague.

I've read all of the other seven reviews of this series. Most of the reviewers stated that they were living in Britain and the ones that didn't all seemed to know something about the channel that aired the show. There is also several comparisons to a show from here called 'The West Wing'. Also, all of the reviews were written from January through March of 2008 which is, it seems, when the series was first aired on the ITV channel.

I have never seen 'The West Wing' and I have no idea what ITV or channel 4 is all about and that's fine because none of that has any bearing on 'The Palace'.

This show stands on its own as a good, high quality series centered around a fictional royal family and the internal strive and back-biting that begins to take place after the death of the king, which starts the series and everything gets rolling from there.

This is a enjoyable little eight episode series and I wish it had gone on longer; I don't think that one can say anything better about serial entertainment; can you?

Okay, so a certain amount of belief has to be suspended to enjoy this, but that doesn't mean it's not good TV. There seem to be far too many comparisons to the West Wing. The Palace is basically a tongue-in-cheek dramatisation of a whole bunch of 'what-ifs'. And, if you can get over the initial premise and look a little deeper, there are quite a number of points here about male succession, the spilt between crown and parliament, staff loyalty, the duty of monarchy and so on. This has not just been thrown together - in fact by making all the characters fictional the writers have much greater license to look at and expose some of the more interesting facets of the UK constitution.

The main problem is that it falls between two stools. It's too silly for a Royalist drama, and not quite biting enough for black comedy. It would actually be much better off on Channel 4. ITV doesn't have much of a history of 'faintly subversive' so doesn't know what to do with it, and the critics don't know what to make of it.

"The Palace" looks like one of those American post-adolescent dramas where beautiful young 20-somethings are scheming and screwing at every opportunity. Even the role of the queen, recently widowed, seems to have been written for Joan Collins.

Cheap, tawdry, and ridiculous though it is it makes amusing fluff, a pleasant diversion. If you want to laugh at young actors struggling a little too hard to look like they're taking themselves seriously and roll your eyes at the absurdity this could be a lot of fun. In fact, one has to wonder how much the creative staff for this silliness just saw the whole thing as a spoof. If anyone meant this show to be taken seriously it's an epic fail, but as a take-off on American dramas, it's really quite funny.