We’re Already Down One! “Ladies of London” Season 4, Episodes 1 and 2 recap

Not to brag, but totally to brag, we’re only one episode in to this reboot, and one of my friends’ houses has already been featured on this show. You know that house that Margo, the American actress, goes to check out, which is £4,500 pounds a night? Yeah, I’ve been to dinner parties there. Not for the renters either. For the owners, honey. Where is my invitation to be on the show? They’re letting boys in now, can’t I be the American counterbalance to Mark-Francis?

Although I have been living in London for the past eight years and have some familiarity with the places they’ve filmed, this is not really the London I inhabit. I live in East London, which used to be the more working-class side of town and is now where the cool kids and lots of the immigrant population live. However, I live right by the Elizabeth Line. This underground line goes right through the center of town, so it’s only a couple of stops for me to go back to Paddington, back to Paddington, back to Paddington (to quote a new English institution) and be on the side of town where all of these ladies (and one gentleman who lives gentlemen) seem to live.

The two-episode premiere really delivers on drama, personality, rich settings, and some hilariously wonderful confessionals, but most of all, it delivers the cast — lots and lots of cast. Let’s meet them all, shall we?

Martha Lady Sitwell: Clearly shaping up to be the star of the show, this hilarious and outrageous drinks enthusiast is so posh that she’s about a million Victoria Beckhams squashed together in a Mini Cooper. We learn that she grew up in privilege, has married two rich men, and now lives in semi-squalor in a “grottage,” which is what she calls her “gross cottage.” There is nothing more aristocratic in England than having the title, the connections, the invitations, and absolutely no money at all. What’s great about Martha is that she is both entirely a type and a total individual at the same time. I could not love her more or be more scared of her than Katy Perry is of litigious nuns.

Martha also lives with a magpie named Hecate, which is both bonkers and amazing, even though it poops all over her rotted house. What I find weird about it, though, is that English people are superstitious of seeing a single magpie like it’s a black cat crossing your path. If you see only one, you’re supposed to say — out loud, mind you — “Hello, Mr. Magie, where is your lady wife?” because that implies that there are two of them, so you won’t have bad luck. Why all single magpies have to be men is unclear — the patriarchy in action. So now here’s Martha just seeing single magpies all over the place. No wonder she gave a man she met in the park £300 to paint her house, and he’s never going to show up again. It’s Hecate’s fault!

Emma Thynn, Marchioness of Bath: Like Martha, she is also an aristocrat but a few steps higher, thanks to her husband’s title. Her husband is the Marquess of Bath, which is closer to Bristol and Wales than it is to London, but nothing in England is really that far. His name is Ceawlin Thynn, a collection of vowels and consonants that you would not expect together, especially considering these are the people who invented our mother tongue. She’s the first Black aristocrat in England, so take that, Meghan Sussex. I have never been to Longleat, which is their stately home that is also a zoo and safari park, but I am booking my tickets right away. I can tour a giant house and see a rhino in the same day after just 90 minutes on the train? Sounds like an outing to me. Emma is definitely bringing class and money to the proceedings, but I’m curious why she would want to do this show in the first place. I’m sure we’re about to find out.

Mark-Francis Vandelli: This is not this quipster’s first time at the reality-television rodeo. He was on Made in Chelsea for years and years. Hmmm. How to explain Made in Chelsea to Americans? Well, it’s like The Hills in that it’s very slick and “produced,” but everyone on it is equally young but superrich and from the fanciest of neighborhoods in town. He seems to be the connector in the group and has a very English sense of humor, where everything is just on the right side of being an insult, but, because it’s clever, you don’t really mind and just kind of laugh at yourself. He’s especially good at confessionals, and I can’t wait until we finally meet and go toe-to-witty-toe.

Margo Stilley: An American actress who was in the infamous indie movie 9 Songs about a couple who just go to concerts and fucks. Both the concerts and the fucking are real. It got a lot of attention for that, but the reviews were terrible. She lived in London for 20 years before moving back to Malibu and is back in town filming The Trip, a show directed by Michael Winterbottom, who also made 9 Songs. It’s unclear who her husband is, but we know the $50,000-a-month housing budget she has is not from filming that show. Margo gets props for starting the best rumor of the episode, which is that Dara is a madam. This rumor is based on nothing except something she heard at a party, which is the best kind of rumor, and I’m happy to repeat it.

Lottie Kane: She’s a tech investor’s daughter, she’s married to a dandy who is also a tailor, and she’s pregnant. That’s all we know so far. She seems a bit too mild and English at the moment, but I’m ready for the drama to come to her.

Kimi Murdoch: Another confessional assassin, Kimi is the kind of American who has been living in London so long that her accent starts to shift and sound like it’s somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. You know, like what happened to Madonna after she slept with Guy Ritchie three times. She’s a Haitian American shipping heiress and is raising twins named Amadeus and Mimi, which is maybe a little too close to Kimi for my liking. Kimi says that she likes the U.K. more than the U.S. because there is less judgment. The example she uses is if you order Champagne at 11 a.m. in London, no one will bat an eyelash. Yes, because they are all drunks, so there is less judgment if you have a drinking problem, but for just about everything else, the English are far more judgmental; they just won’t say anything about it to your face. Kimi, like her accent, is now such a blend of English and American that she will judge you, and she will say it out loud. Perfect for TV.

Myka Meier: She’s American; her husband is in private equity; she runs etiquette lessons for English people, which seems like a stretch; and she went to the University of Florida. No one who lives in London knows what that means, but everyone reading this does. Her bestie is Dara, who seems to kind of hate her.

Dara Huang: An architect whose ex is now married to the daughter of the man formerly known as Prince Andrew, who was just arrested for Epstein-related reasons. By the end of the second episode, she quits the show. Why? Well, I think mostly because of Missé.

Missé Beqiri: A Swedish model who has children with both footballer Anders Lindegaard and Jake Hall, who was on The Only Way Is Essex. Hmmm. How to explain TOWIE to Americans? So it’s like The Hills, but everyone on it is from the English equivalent of New Jersey. It’s basically the trashy Made in Chelsea. She was also on The Real Housewives of Cheshire, which is a fancy suburb of Liverpool, which is full of rich and tacky new money. That is why Missé understands the assignment, which is taking something she heard Dara say to the group and then right to Dara’s face at a dinner she’s hosting.

All of the drama in the first episodes comes from Dara. First, Margo says that she heard that she’s a madam, which is so laughably untrue that when Myka tells Dara about this rumor, she says that she doesn’t even care. This is exactly the attitude that she should take. Raging against it and putting up a big fight is just going to make you look more like a madam. (For the record, prostitution in the U.K. is mostly legal, but running a brothel or being a madam is not.) Of course, everyone makes jokes about her being a madam, mostly, I think, because they don’t believe it, and, honestly, that is the English way. What’s not a good look is that they are accusing the one Asian woman on the cast of being a sex worker, which seems not so great to me. They also don’t stop when Dara hosts a dinner and introduces her two friends, who don’t want to say how they met Dara but will say that she’s always connecting successful, beautiful women. I have a feeling that if she didn’t quit the show right after filming this scene, she would have gotten a nicer edit, but that’s what happens when you abandon ship right as it’s leaving the dock.

Missé says in confessional that she used to be quiet and keep things in, but she’s been traumatized by men in her life so now she is saying everything. This sounds like something a reality-television producer told her to justify her spreading the stuff that Dara said about her “bestie,” Myka, off-camera. These two went to the University of Florida together, and Myka considered Dara her best friend. However, Dara told Missé that she found Myka cringe and tacky, and she didn’t like it that she brought hot-pink walkie-talkies for them so they could talk at work because their offices are only one floor apart.

When Missé brings this all up at dinner, Dara bats it down and says she never said that and just wants to have a “nice dinner,” which is what she says over and over. Myka asks her if they can go talk about it, and Dara says, condescendingly, “No, babe. I love you,” and literally gives her the kiss off. She gets up from the table and talks to a producer and says that she did say those things, which I’m assuming she thinks won’t air. Then she sits back down and says she didn’t say those things again, which upsets Missé, who doesn’t want to be called a liar. Between this and the madam talk, Dara starts saying, “Cut. Cut. Cut,” as if she can stop this. She says she wants to leave, and she’s not cut out for reality television. No, she clearly is not. I don’t think we’ve ever seen anyone quit on-camera before, but it was really fascinating to see her change her mind in real time. She thought she was getting together a group of entrepreneurs — going around the table and showing the nepo-baby privilege of everyone around the table was a great touch — and instead it’s just a bunch of sniping reality-TV harpies who want all of the gossip and want to air it out before the starters (which is what English people call appetizers) are even cleared. I couldn’t be happier for my adopted hometown.

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