Prince of Peoria Season 1 Review

Prince of Peoria is a comedy show aimed towards the younger audience. It is a Netflix Original series of eight episodes as part one of the first season, with an additional selection arriving at a later time. You may expect a season one part two review at some point. That aside, it follows a young prince Emil (Gavin Lewis) that's only birthday desire is to live in the United States for a year. This is to be in an undercover situation so that he can properly experience it. With the request in motion, he lives with a family headed by Regina (Cynthia Kaye McWilliams) and her son Teddy (Theodore Barnes).

They begin to live together without the latter two knowing of this detail with the prince posing as just being a foreign exchange student. The show is a mix of keeping this a secret while being obvious as the prince is blown away by everything he witnesses. There was actually some great acting in that regard from the young price, lots of excitement and energy to really present each scene. Barnes was set as more of a stiff calm opposition and he comes across as a bit stilted and awkward at times instead.

The mother was also rather funny, they have a good balance of comedy that would work well for the younger audience with some perhaps more adult jokes/references that would fly over the younger one's heads'. That works well, as I did find some of it funny whereas other scenes were sort of awkward. There's a fair selection of episodes, but they're mostly just standalone after the establishing couple. It feels like a Disney/Family channel types series and that was probably the goal there.

They had some neat moments within the Prince of Peoria and it largely does work. The two reporter twins were golden and there were some neat gags throughout the season. That being said, some of it was rather weird and strangely the third main youth, Sydney (Shelby Simmons) vanished in the last few episodes. It was odd to see such an integration and then it's like she was never there. Many story lines seem to get dropped and it went for more of a random, this is what they're doing today type of situation.

They did some really silly things here, nothing too deep and it was average for the most part. They had some rather funny moments, these were sprinkled throughout though many parts didn't land for me. That being said, it might be a much more enjoyable time for the target audience. I thought the premise was fine, hopefully in the latter part of the season they play on that aspect more. The sets were decent, had a lot going on with them. Definitely some odd looking characters and this played into the various silly moments found throughout the episodes.

The Conclusion

Prince of Peoria is an alright show that might hit well with the younger audience being strange and comedic at times as well. They didn't really get too deep with some parts where they could have and it was strange how narrative elements would just get dropped. I suppose it's fine to have a show with a random assortment of events, but the beauty of not having to have the episodes be able to randomly play while viewed on TV is that you can create a cohesive story.

The acting was hit or miss at times, but everyone seemed into it and they have some strange characters. I hope to see the twin reporters more, really quite fun. They had some neat moments, some bizarre ones and an interesting concept to roll with. It has the potential to be a fairly generic set show similar to what you'd see on Disney/Family channels and that's fine, it was what the type of setup I watched when I was young.

Prince of Peoria Season 1 Review at Home with Streamed Viewing

Rating Overall: 6.2