Victoria returns with poise, passion and higher stakes
As a slightly peculiar A-level student, I used to think there was nothing more exciting than the history of mid-victorian Britain with its Great Reform Acts, its Corn Laws and its Chartism. My 16-year-old self would doubtless have been thrilled by this third series of Victoria (ITV, Sunday) which began in 1848, The Year of Revolutions, of Chartism’s last gasp and the PIN for my Griffin Savers Account (told you I was odd).
The 40-year-old me was less enthralled, although Jenna Coleman’s performance as Victoria remained an admirably adept balancing act of poise and passion, and perhaps a shade more Not Amused than previously. Laurence Fox’s arrival as one of her nemeses, Lord Palmerston (a man who, urban myth in Lower 6th History had it, expired mid-roger on a billiard table), jazzed things up considerably.
Fox brought all his natural hauteur to bear on this towering figure, a foreign secretary whose rapacious appetites and roving eye left Victoria unimpressed and were summed up by his Swiss Toni-esque observation that “the British public is like a beautiful woman”. Poor John Sessions rather wilted in his presence as PM Lord John Russell, who was not the fuddy-duddy doormat depicted here, but undoubtedly a man with his best days behind him.
Victoria took equal exception to Palmerston’s crowing over the fall of the “autocrats of Europe”. The first of these was Louis Philippe (Vincent Regan), fleeing France to seek asylum in London just as the capital itself began to simmer with insurrection. Albert (Tom Hughes) was spurred into an unlikely incognito visit to the slums, keen to understand why people were taking against them: poverty allied to lack of representation made for a potentially explosive cocktail. The working-class political reformers the Chartists, torn between violent revolution and peaceful protest, readied the fuse. “We are not a revolutionary people,” reckoned Victoria; a claim likely to be tested severely in the coming weeks.
It was a tough hour for Her Majesty, who also faced the unwanted return of long-estranged half-sister Feodora (an enigmatic Kate Fleetwood), as well as politically awakened servants and her waters breaking for child number six as the barbarians gathered at the gates. The below-stairs action dragged and some of the history was questionable but, thanks to Coleman, Fox and the exemplary visuals (the episode was dedicated to the series’ late production designer, Michael Howells), it sailed along serenely enough. B-minus, but encouraging signs, rather like my essays.
Baptiste (BBC One, Sunday) finally sputtered into life for half its concluding episode. Following a car chase and return visit to voyeur Bram (Tom Audenaert), Baptiste (Tchéky Karyo) and Genevieve (Jessica Raine) tumbled that Niels (Boris van Severen), Baptiste’s son with Dutch police chief Martha (Barbara Sarafian), had sold out to Romanian gangsters. At which point the tension seeped out like smoke from an Amsterdam coffee shop, as the curious pacing that has dogged the series took its toll.
There’s something awry when a hostage situation involving two central characters evokes little more than a shrug, but I was so little invested in Niels and Martha that I cared not about the accidental matricide. His reasoning, that a diagnosis of cancer somehow instilled in him a sense of the futility of life (“these things happen, with or without me”) and prompted his flip from cop to criminal – “Why not live some other kind of life?” – was ludicrous, yet van Severen was never given the opportunity to construct a convincingly crazy persona to sell such nonsense.
Thank goodness, once again, for Karyo and Tom Hollander. “What is it about me that makes people think they can just push me around?” mewled Hollander’s series punchbag Edward Stratton (or perhaps mewled Hollander to writers Harry and Jack Williams). The Williams brothers at least gave him ammunition to confirm his status as TV’S most enjoyable swearer. That Hollander could do so while concocting such a rivetingly sad blend of depression, suppressed fury and self-loathing was near-miraculous.
It was appropriate that this pair signed off strolling on the beach where it all began. “The wind blows, still the world turns,” mused Baptiste. Profundity remained elusive in a disappointing conclusion to a series which never quite justified its existence. Next week comes Line of Duty to show us how it’s really done.