Ihen the pitch that gave La Maison its breakthrough didn’t mention Succession and Emily in Paris, I’m eating my couture fascinator. This rich, occasionally sickly French soap opera about the trials and tribulations of a fashion house called Ledu is over-the-top, melodramatic and frequently absurd. It’s full of the cheese and little subtlety. But despite the silly plot twists and smug mood, it’s very good, mindless television that’s as elegantly trashy as it is irresistibly delicious.

Vincent Ledu (Lambert Wilson) is the artistic director of a legendary fashion house that has grown from humble beginnings as a small family atelier to an international heavyweight. It’s part of the French establishment, and Vincent can’t stand the accolades he’s receiving. That is, until he does a John Galliano and is filmed at a party in the middle of a racist tirade about a wealthy private client. When the footage leaks and goes viral, his position at the helm of the family business is untenable. It’s become a meme around the world, Vincent learns. “What’s a meme?” he asks, obviously on behalf of the show, which doesn’t seem to know either.

La Maison casts an eye on the fashion industry but is far too enamored with its subject matter to be particularly scathing. Vincent is the old guard, but the new talent is hot on his heels. Paloma Castel (Zita Hanrot) is a bold visionary with her own historical ties to Vincent and his company. Paloma and her co-designer Ye-Ji (Park Ji-min) drive around Paris in a battered old RV and put on an independent fashion show that made me cringe so hard that La Maison owes me a new jar of eye cream and a massage. “You are eco-warriors, and tonight we are going to make fashion history,” Paloma tells her team before pushing rainbow-haired models down a makeshift runway in an old warehouse while they all chant “Fashion Kills!” Later, they paint “Rovel is green-watching you” in English on the steps of the headquarters of Ledu’s main competitor. This makes Rovel sound like an environmental prefect. Wouldn’t green watching be the opposite of greenwashing?

Yet to tug at the threads of La Maison is to undo the pleasure one gets from simply gawking at its bold, bright stitches. Rovel is Ledu’s enemy, owned by the piece’s Logan Roy, an icy matriarch named Diane Rovel (an imperious Carole Bouquet). Diane is the richest woman in France, and her life’s goal is to buy out her rivals. Of course, each of them harbors a dark secret that could lead to their downfall. Vincent’s brother Victor (Pierre Deladonchamps) is the boss of Rovel and a shareholder in Ledu. Victor is married to Diane’s daughter but is having an affair with Perle Foster (Amira Casar), Vincent’s decades-long muse, a former English model he supposedly tore away from the smell of fish and chips and her old life as the nondescript Tracy Foster. She’s a bit Isabella Blow, a bit Agyness Deyn. Meanwhile, Victor and Vincent’s hapless nephew Robinson (Antoine Reinartz), with his frighteningly fragile ego, squanders every chance to make a name for himself. He is crushed by the pressure of the famous family name and has a weakness for the handsome men in the office.

It all makes the Roys seem like a functioning unit. Everyone rants, hisses, backstabs, and cheats while fabrics are dramatically ripped and slashed. Their bad behavior is bad enough to be fun, though it could be a bit more vicious at times. Diane fires a driver for stopping at a light next to an advertisement for Ledu. Vincent is surprised to find that arrogance, defiance, and denial aren’t the best traits after being exposed as a racist. “I’ll be Queen Elizabeth at Balmoral after Diana dies,” he suggests, but quickly botches his own strategy by telling everyone to go to hell instead.

Despite a willingness to belt out the big notes, the first episode suggests a series that’s perhaps too buttoned up for its own good. It’s silly and earnest, a kind of high-low camp that needs to loosen its collar to find its rhythm. But the arrival of Diane Rovel, the argument over who, if anyone, will succeed Vincent, and the question of who will burnish Ledu’s tarnished reputation in the modern age seem to get the series moving. This isn’t a sophisticated drama, despite its exquisite setting, but it’s deceptively satisfying.