‘Royal Family’ TV series veers to the ludicrous
The latest and possibly final season of The Royal Family – the flagship production of Combined British Newspapers Studios – has debuted for 2020 with record ratings but mixed reviews amongst criticism that its storylines seemed rushed and its character arcs border on ludicrous.
In a first episode climax not foreshadowed in the Queen’s traditional Christmas Day Official Trailer, audience favourites Harry and Meghan were revealed to be a couple of dodgy chancers who would sell their respective grandmothers down the Thames for a Canadian two-bob note.
The development left long-time Royal Family fans gasping and drawing comparisons with other classic soaps.
‘‘It’s a stunner innit, guvnor’’ said Barry Lime, a stereotypical British viewer, who in his own words ‘‘did not see that coming’’.
‘‘All it needed was for William to tell Harry he was going to knock some sense into him, Kate to shout ‘Don’t Wills, he’s not worth it!’ and next – doof doof doof! – there’s your Eastenders credit sequence.’’
While the latest season is proving a winner for Combined British Newspapers Studios, sources close to some of the key actors in The Royal Family have revealed disquiet with the way studio executives are exercising influence over the production.
One such actor is Meghan, Duchess of Sussex herself, whose character description over two seasons has morphed from ‘‘muchneeded breath of fresh air in stuffy royal household’’ to ‘‘uppity money-grubbing cross between Wallis Simpson and Yoko Oko’’.
‘‘I just don’t get it. What are the showrunners thinking of?’’ the noticeably brown-skinned foreign woman is reported as saying.
Another one-time Royal Family fan favourite, Prince ‘‘Randy Andy’’ Andrew, has also expressed concern at the one-dimensional development of his character.
‘‘All one comes across is as a friend of convicted paedophiles and arms dealers. Where’s the nuance there?’’ said the Prince as he received a foot-massage from someone he didn’t really notice.
‘‘Can’t one at least be a polite friend of convicted paedophiles and arms dealers?’’
The Prince has suggested a radical reboot of the series in which he steps out of the shower to find he’s still married to wife Sarah Ferguson, who confides to him that every season of The Royal Family since 1992’s ‘‘annus horribilis" has actually been nothing but a cheese-induced dream, and how about some conjugal toe-sucking?
Not every actor is concerned about the show’s new direction. The Duke of Edinburgh has praised his character’s sudden swerve from comedic Badly Driving Old Geezer to this season’s Shakespearean-inspired Incandescently Raging Patriarch.
‘‘It’s the role I was born to play’’ palace insiders report HRH Prince Philip as saying, ‘‘and anyone saying otherwise deserves a damnably good thrashing.’’
Pressed for comment, Her Majesty the Queen remained mum about her future involvement with the series, saying only that her character would never abdicate before adding that she had, however, been tempted to fly out to New Zealand for a couple of months and let Olivia Colman take over the orb and sceptre.
‘‘In the end though I just couldn’t,’’ Her Majesty explained.
‘‘My character has to do a very unpleasant scene with Boris Johnson every week in which he waffles at me for a good 15 minutes, and I’d hate for anyone else to go through that.’’