A right royal let- down
IN some TV moments, even to the least observant viewers’ eyes, the discomfort is obvious. Parties on soap operas, for example, never look like convincing parties. They look like a bunch of actors on a set trying to pretend in broad daylight that they’re all tipsy and having a lovely time and loathing it.
Programmes about royalty suffer from the same unease. There are fewer of the “Queen’s tour of the Commonwealth” type shows around these days and I’m never sure if it’s because Her Majesty is making fewer tours or the BBC has realised how awkward they look.
Those endless shots of waving schoolchildren. The presenter or royal correspondent embarrassed at how little she or he really knows of the royals, chuntering
away about the petrol consumption statistics of the state limousine.
THE QUEEN’S LONGEST REIGN: ELIZABETH AND
VICTORIA ( BBC1) tried to avoid the problem by pretending to be a history documentary. Essentially this was a tribute to the Queen, who tomorrow will become the United Kingdom’s longest- reigning monarch.
She deserves a tribute for that, of course, however awkward, although in world rankings she remains a long way behind Sobhuza II, the King of Swaziland and Idris ibni Muhammad al- Qadri, the Tunku Besar of Tampin.
Rather than just be honest about it and have Sophie Raworth hovering around a few official engagements, the BBC went for low cunning. Queen Victoria, someone realised, would now be the UK’s second- longest reigning monarch.
This provided the cue for all sorts of stunning comparisons, such as neither woman was born expecting to inherit the throne, both married foreign princes, both spent a lot of time presenting awards to the military. I imagine both owned crowns, lots of shoes and knew the words to Auld Lang Syne, too, and at times this flimsy documentary was a manicured fingernail away from being that irrelevant.
It comes down to the flaw behind every two- for- one deal, which is that you end up with slightly less than half of a good thing.
A classic BBC Events- style doff of the cap would have been fine. Equally good on its own, a proper, thorough, uninterrupted look at the reigns of the two queens.
A brace of historians providing soundbites couldn’t lend this bit of TV bunting the weight it needed. We were, as our country’s second longest- reigning monarch once said, not amused.
Sometimes though no learned comment is needed. BRITAIN: AS
SEEN ON ITV ( ITV) presents a light but addictive string of themed archive clips with last night’s being all about transport. It was alarming to see how many men in the early Sixties viewed their cars as second, perhaps even superior to their wives. This may have been because a car in the early Sixties cost more than a gold ring and a cold buffet.
Most of the real fun for modern viewers stemmed less from the footage and more from that smug, “oh, if only they knew” feeling that accompanied it.
The Northamptonshire man, for example, who felt sure that people would soon reject the “congested” roads in favour of light aircraft. Better yet the lady who thought modern civilisation was under threat from people eating their chips on the bus.
You longed for a time machine to flash into 2015, on to a top deck full of teens listening to Rihanna on their phones. Oh, if only she knew.