‘Victoria’ stumbles into its 2nd season
It’s tempting to compare the “Masterpiece” series “Victoria” to the Netflix epic “The Crown,” but for the sake of those who are partial to weak, reheated PBS tea, I’ll do my best to resist.
What has happened to this once promising effort to dramatize the very long and historic reign of Queen Victoria? After its stellar first season, this year’s follow-up is still entertaining, but sometimes treats actual history as a mere suggestion, tries to get away with uninspired writing and is, sadly, boring for very long stretches, as you see soon after the season premieres on Sunday, Jan. 14, on PBS.
The new season finds Victoria ( Jenna Coleman) learning to cope with the complexities of the court without the everpresent support of her mentor, Lord Melbourne (Rufus Sewell), who has repaired to his own estate to raise orchids
since he is no long prime minister. At the same time, her German-born husband, Prince Albert (Tom Hughes), is trying to adjust to the fact that outside of their private quarters, his wife is more important than he is.
The new season certainly brings challenges to Victoria, including what to do about the Irish potato famine, whether to enact free trade to make food and goods affordable for the general population, doing what she can to restore Britain’s status at home and abroad after a bloody defeat in the Anglo-Afghan War, and how to stop a political marriage between the ruling families of France and Spain. In these and other matters, Victoria is learning how to exert her influence on the government without crossing lines. Her new prime minister, Robert Peel (Nigel Lindsay), is unsure that the young monarch has the right stuff to rule, but eventually learns to respect her considerable backbone and strategic acumen.
On the personal front, Victoria and Albert have their first child, a girl, but immediately experience pressure from family members and government leaders to keep at it until a male heir can be produced. Victoria bristles at the pressure, declaring she has no intention of being a “brood mare” for anyone.
At the same time, as Albert finds less and less to do at court, he explores his own interests, including learning about the invention of the precursor of the modern computer by Lady Lovelace (Emerald Fennell), daughter of Lord Byron, and Charles Babbage ( Jo Stone-Fewings).
Below stairs, there’s plenty of intrigue to engage those who miss “Downton Abbey,” with the addition of an Irish Catholic scullery maid (Tilly Steele), and a heightened power struggle between Penge (Adrian Schiller) and Nancy Skerrett (Nell Hudson), who has been promoted to the queen’s chief dresser and continues to secretly support her impoverished sister.
The season includes a visit by the queen to the court of French King Louis-Philippe (Bruno Wolkowitch), and to Scotland where Victoria and Albert have an adventure that sends the rest of the court into panic mode.
The performances are still winning and almost succeed in plastering over the series’ workmanlike direction and the mediocrity of the script, which is overstuffed with telegraphing.
And then there is the apocryphal nonsense that pads the scripts, as if the facts of Victoria’s life and reign were not sufficient to hold our interest.
Among the season’s loosey-goosey approach to history is an invented flirtation between Edward Drummond (Leo Suter), private secretary to Peel, and Lord Alfred Paget ( Jordan Waller), a member of the queen’s court. The ages of the characters are wrong, and one of them is killed but in a way totally at odds with how the real man died.
Like other plot strains, this one is developed in an overpopulated series of very brief scenes, scattered through several episodes. Each scene is more or less the same: one of the would-be lovers looks furtively into the eyes of the other while they pass in a hallway, or while delivering a message on a silver tray to the queen. It goes on for so long, you find yourself wishing the term “get a room” had come into common use far earlier than it did in real life.
Creator Daisy Goodwin has already proved herself guilty of watching too much “Downton Abbey,” but this season, she also seems to have caught an episode or two of “Outlander,” the hit Starz series about a 20th century woman who travels back in time to Scotland and has an affair with a kilted hottie. The scene where Skerrett has a highland fling with a blond, bearded hunk is more than a wee bit full of hooey.
One can only imagine a third season of “Victoria” if Goodwin gets hooked on “The Big Bang Theory.”
Bazinga, your majesty.
The various story lines are treated like house flies with the directors flitting about swatting at one after another, and missing more than they hit. Instead of adding dramatic tension, the directorial approach often leads to torpor.
Coleman adjusts her performance beautifully to reflect the fact that Victoria is older now and is learning she has to stand up for herself. Hughes also adjusts his performance to reflect Albert’s frequent roil of emotions. He is mad for his wife, but bristles at being resented by some in the palace household.
Alex Jennings is playing the historical-drama field as a villain in both “The Crown” and “Victoria.” As the Duke of Windsor in the former, he became a hissing, Nazi-loving serpent last season. In “Victoria,” as King Leopold, uncle to Albert and his brother, Ernest (David Oakes), he is a manipulative cad. He makes a revelatory suggestion to Albert that all but ends their relationship.
Diana Rigg joins the cast this season as the fusty, outspoken Duchess of Buccleuch, more or less playing a character like Olenna Tyrell in “Game of Thrones” — wise, strategic and old enough not to care what others think of her. She is, of course, magnificent. And like the Dowager Countess of Grantham in “Downton,” she is missed every time she’s not onscreen. The flaws in the second season of “Victoria” are not fatal, but they are worrisome, especially given the care with which the first season of the series was crafted. Victoria hung around for a long time in real life and remains one of the most fascinating figures in world history. She deserves more care than Goodwin accords her in “Victoria’s” second season.
Victoria bristles at the pressure to have a male heir, declaring she has no intention of being a “brood mare.”