New drama ‘The Royals’ as trashy as you’d expect from E!

How long has it been since Britain had a sexy queen?

Queen Victoria wasn’t bad. And Queen Elizabeth I was a bit of a saucy minx back in her day. But the United Kingdom has never seen a true cleavage-baring sex bomb quite like Elizabeth Hurley’s Queen Helena in “The Royals” (10 p.m. Sunday, E!).

E! is making entirely too big of a deal about this being the cable channel’s “first scripted series.” It’s as if all those work-in-progress screeners E! sent out over the years, the ones that showed the text of the voiceover “confessionals” the stars of its reality shows would eventually record, never existed.

Trust me, everything E! has ever aired has been scripted.

Except maybe E! News. That absolutely seems made upon the fly.

Anyway, as first tries at dramas go, “The Royals” won’t make anyone forget about AMC’s “Mad Men,” FX’s “The Shield” or HBO’s “Oz.” There are glimpses of its campy potential. And it’s every bit as trashy as you’d expect from the channel that unleashed the Kardashians on an unsuspecting public.

Sunday’s premiere features Princess Eleanor (Alexandra Park) partying at a nightclub with booze and coke before falling off a table and having her royal naughty bits splashed on the front of all the tabloids thanks to a cellphone upskirt pic. Later, she breaks out her favorite bong in the state dining room, giving a whole new meaning to the title Your Highness.

“Honestly, Eleanor,” Hurley’s Helena says at one point, “who fondled you as a child?”

Between crowd surfing at a royal garden party and unwittingly sleeping with the daughter of the king’s security chief, Prince Liam (William Moseley) is only slightly more reserved.

Still, it seems a little over the top when, in the midst of grieving over the death of her firstborn son, Helena slaps Liam and calls Eleanor a “little bitch.”

It’s little wonder why King Simon (Vincent Regan) wants to introduce a referendum to abolish the monarchy.

Then again, that could also be blamed on Simon’s lecherous, scheming brother, Cyrus (Jake Maskall), and Cyrus’ daughters Maribel (Hatty Preston) and Penelope (Lydia Rose Bewley). The latter two may have been inbred, seem to at the very least be brain damaged and are wholly insufferable.

“Your breath,” one tells the other. “It smells like a fart.”

“Anyway, it was nice to meet you,” the other — or it could be the same one, I gave up trying to care — tells a champion swimmer. “I’m extremely slutty.”

Created by Mark Schwahn (“One Tree Hill”), “The Royals” comes off like “Downton Abbey” meets “Gossip Girl.” It’s the sort of thing that would have felt at home on The CW, back before it was overrun by superheroes and vampires.

Unfortunately, “The Royals” runs out of ideas almost as fast as “One Tree Hill” did.

A blackmailing grifter from Vegas shows up in episode two, and by the next week, the big drama revolves around whether Eleanor or Helena will produce the better fashion show.

Hiring Joan Collins to portray Helena’s mother is a stroke of genius. But if the quality keeps deteriorating at this rapid rate, by the time she turns up later this season, there may not be anyone left to see her.

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter: life_onthecouch