Amazon Prime’s TV show that ‘nobody wanted’ soars up top 10 ranking

The world of Elle Woods and her acceptance into Harvard (like it’s hard) has expanded this week, with a prequel taking us into her teenage years.

Amazon Prime Video dropped the eight-parter Elle, starring Kexi Minetree as Reese Witherspoon’s pastel pink lawyer-to-be, before we meet her in the 2001 college comedy.

Set during the nostalgie bomb of the 1990s, teenage Elle is living it up in Bel Air with her beloved rescue chihuahua Bruiser, when her parents break the news that they are moving to Seattle.

There, Elle enrols in a high school that is quite literally called Grunge High. Suffice to say, the pupils do not share her penchant for pink.

But the fish-out-of-water schtick can only hold Elle back for so long when she’s armed with that can-do attitude and glass-half-full perspective.

The show might have only just landed on Prime, but it’s already taken the silver-place spot on the streamer’s ranking of top film and TV shows.

However, it has not been greeted with the same critical fanfare as the film, scoring a fairly paltry 55 per cent rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

As the scathing Telegraph write-up put it: ‘Nobody asked for a prequel to Legally Blonde, but now we have one because – ker-ching! – there is money to be made from rinsing the original.’

When the reviews started to trickle in in the days prior to the show’s release, TV fans similarly grumbled over the necessity of a Legally Blonde prequel.

Gripes shared in various Reddit threads included her life as a hotshot lawyer being arguably richer to mine and the fact that this series slightly undermines the transformative trajectory Elle goes on in the film.

@TheTresStateArea said they couldn’t believe the show even got the green light to be made, explaining: ‘No one wants pre-law school Elle Woods. We want Elle Woods, attorney at law, partner of a firm. Elle Woods Supreme Court Justice.’

‘The prequel premise directly contradicts the original film,’ wrote @BungeeGump on Reddit.

‘The point of the movie was that Elle left her bubble of comfort for the very first time by going to Harvard. The movie doesn’t make sense and loses all impact if Elle has left her bubble before.’

@tsumtsumelle echoed: ‘When I first saw the trailer I was shocked at the Seattle reveal because it makes no sense given her story in the movies.

‘It really seems like someone wanted to make a Seattle in the 90s show but were told it had to connect to an existing IP so they shoehorned Elle into it. It makes no sense unless at the end she ends up back in Beverly Hills with amnesia.’

Despite the naysaying, it’s clear some viewers are getting past the pitfalls, given Amazon subscribers have dived into the episodes.

Elle is available to stream on Amazon Prime now.