Featuring an all-Asian-American cast, jaw-dropping excess and a breakout star in the form of Anna Shay, Netflix’s new series cements the streamer as a frontrunner of the genre
Netflix is proving to be a big hitter in the world of reality TV. Last year, it stole hearts with the dating series Love Is Blind and captured imaginations with the US version of the social media-based gameshow The Circle. The latest and most exciting addition to its roster is Bling Empire, a show that makes its luxury property reality series Selling Sunset look as if it were filmed on a very tight budget.
The displays of excess are outright obscene, global pandemic or not: a Gucci arcade-style claw machine at a child’s first birthday party, a wall featuring $300,000 (£220,000) worth of trainers, a spur-of-the-moment lunch trip to one heiress’s favourite restaurant – in
Paris. One woman boasts that her husband is a direct descendant of the Song dynasty, clarifying “that if dynasties still existed in China”, he would be the son of an emperor. But don’t let the OTT flashiness fool you. Not all that glitters is TV gold, but Bling Empire looks likely to be.