Perhaps the most important woman in English history, she has been distorted by prejudices about her era

was dictated by her mother, the Duchess of Kent, and her Svengali-ish adviser, Sir John Conroy, who wished to establish a regency by which they would exercise control. Much of the human drama of the series concerns the way Victoria breaks free of them and establishes herself as her own woman, with the help of Melbourne.

Theirs was, quite genuinely, a close friendship; it’s fair to say he adored the young queen in a chaste way and she depended on him, at least until he left office and was displaced by Albert.

That brings us to another very useful aspect of the series: it reminds us how very the royal family was back then — well, from the st ar t of the eighteenth century until the First World War, when the family prudently changed its name to Windsor.

We see Victoria’s mother speaking to her in German, until Victoria crossly tells her to use English. Her family is German, with their roots back home in Hanover. Her governess, L oui se L ehzen, is German; Albert, when he appears, speaks German with her. The servants observe dourly that “there are too many Germans round here”.

But for the Queen’s subjects it wasn’t a problem as we — conditioned by two world wars — might see it. For the Vi c t o r i a n s , b e i n g G e r man mea n t Protestantism and social liberalism, both rather good things. Indeed, when the English middle classes started to travel abroad, it wasn’t to the hot places we go to now — it was to Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In dynastic, family terms, Victoria was German and European, and that’s how she saw herself.

There are ways in which the actual history is overegged in this series for dramatic impact. For instance, one of Victoria’s early mistakes was to insist that her mother’s confidante Lady Flora Hastings should undergo a physical examination to determine if she was pregnant, though unmarried; this is weirdly interspersed with scenes from the coronation. But it really was a scandal at the time. This was an age in which the personal was political, in a way we can’t quite conceive now.

In one way, though, we are quite well placed to appreciate the series, given that the present Queen has just outreigned Victoria and holds a position in public affection faintly reminiscent of hers in old age. But where Elizabeth II has seen Britain discard many of her dearest values, such as its Anglicanism, Victoria came to reflect the culture of the country over which she reigned. She became, if you like, more Victorian, especially in respect of the empire.

The beauty of this series is that it ends after Victoria’s marriage, with the birth of her first child. Which means it could go on for umpteen series with as many successive incarnations of Victoria as Doctor Who. Which beats Poldark. This could, like Victoria, run and run.