Someone at the BBC or Carnival Films has been spending a lot of time watching Las Vegas haven't they? Las Vegas is a very silly NBC "drama" set in a fictional Las Vegas casino with James Caan coasting along on autopilot with a cast of very pretty people. It's great fun. Everyone looks great, and the story's never that serious as they find an endless stream of crimes to solve and cheats to capture. With the ability to have new guests every episode, there are plenty of cameos and special appearances by bands. The camera work is flashy with fast/slow steadicams, cameras that zoom up lift shafts and down corridors, and speeding shots of the lights and glitter of Las Vegas.
The directors and producers of Hotel Babylon have been studying this very closely, because they've ripped pretty much all of it off. OK, you can't have a big casino in London, because they're essentially seedy affairs full of (Warning: sterotype approaching) Arab and Chinese gentlemen, so they've relocated to one of those exclusive hotels that keep springing up all over the place.
The helicopter shots of London ensure that the city's never looked better, and the cast of characters running the hotel, lead by Max Beesley and Tamzin Outhwaite, are singularly young and, well, basically quite pretty. They do at least acknowledge that most of the service staff in London hotels have English as a second language.
Having said all that, they've produced a fun and fluffy piece of nonsense. It's not so knowing that it's pure soap, but it's not far off. I suspect that once we've got through a few episodes of this, there won't be much more in the way of secrets to tell us about hotels, and it'll be likely stories. Likewise, the subplots involving Beesley's character trying to hide his prison record, and Outhwaite's character's marriage falling apart, seem a bit dull, and the quicker they're played out, the better. I'm sure they could have come up with something a little more interesting.