To the extent he thinks about real-life royal families at all, says Mark Schwahn, he rather admires them.

“I mean, I know they do some great things,” he says. “They do amazing work with charities.”

But.

“I just don’t think that’s the sort of story people would turn on E! every week to watch.”

So instead Schwahn created “The Royals,” which he cheerfully admits can get “dirty, sexy, snarky and twisted.”

It’s a lavish, sprawling drama about a fictional contemporary British royal family that spends more time on partying, sex and palace intrigue than on improving the lives of orphans, saving the whales or developing water sources for sub-Saharan Africa.

Credit: nydailynew.com