There’s something that happens to a Bravo fan when they turn on a new show, and it immediately sparks.
It’s a visceral, physical reaction. You can feel the cells of your body start quivering with excitement. Your brain synapses start firing off with excitement about the potential memes, quotes, and “stanning” that will soon dominate your entire personality. Your soul, if you get real quiet and listen hard, lets out a wee gleeful, “Hell yeah!”
Ladies of London: The New Reign, the first two episodes of which I just streamed on Peacock, is that good. It’s a Real Housewives of Salt Lake City-level discovery. (Bravo fans know those are hallowed words, not given haphazardly.) I got echoes of Scary Island. I saw the kindlings of Beverly Hills in Amsterdam. The entire cast is a constellation of reality TV stars in the making; I’m lucky and positively giddy to sip tea with them (from my couch).
The series is a spinoff of Ladies of London, which ran for three seasons on Bravo as essentially its Real Housewives of London from 2014-17; it’s now mostly remembered for introducing Caroline Stanbury, who was also a cast member on Real Housewives of Dubai and The Traitors. I never watched it.
This new series, The New Reign, autoplayed on my Peacock app after I was catching up on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. That I may not otherwise have ever sampled the series…it’s a horror I don’t have the fortitude to even think about. That’s how much the show means to me now, just days after watching its first two episodes.
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