Mumsy Vic’s lost her shine

Ireally wish I hadn’t rewatched the entire first series of The Crown before settling down to Victoria on ITV last night.

Don’t get me wrong, Victoria is a steady enough period drama and Jenna Coleman royally commands your attention throughout.

It is not a patch on Netflix’s genuinely majestic take on our current Queen’s reign, though.

Which means I will probably spend the rest of this second series thinking Victoria could do so much better. It didn’t help last night’s opener didn’t exactly come flying out of the traps.

Victoria is now a married mother of one, so the thing which made the first series so watchable – the passion and suspense of the chase – has now given way to Victoria struggling to bond with her baby and dealing with the pressures of motherhood, a full-time job and her husband’s obsession with helmets.

Some of those can be very real issues, of course. Sadly they don’t set the pulse racing on a Sunday night. Speaking of which, there’s no sign of Rufus Sewell’s Lord Melbourne either.

It also feels like Daisy Goodwin might have had Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves playing on a loop while she was writing this series.

If the idiot mansplainers at court were around today they’d deserve everything Goodwin gives them.

But she’s using a sledgehammer to crack a sexist nut.

If I wanted a weekly sermon on how useless men are I’d pay more attention to Eastenders.