Royal revelations from declassified files? Not here
TPremier league: the Queen and Winston Churchill got on famously
he last of three Royals Declassified documentaries promised a new understanding of the Queen’s relationship with her prime ministers over the decades, thanks to “previously classified documents, private letters and secret communiqués.” It delivered nothing of the sort. You’d get more scoops standing behind an incontinent corgi.
We have to assume that The Queen and Her Prime Ministers (Channel 4) was in development before Peter Morgan started researching The Crown, or indeed his film The Queen his play The Audience, because this documentary trod almost exactly the same ground and in less comfy shoes.
You surely know the story: the Queen and Churchill used to laugh a lot, because Churchill was funny. The Queen liked Harold Wilson as he was a breath of fresh air after so many fusty old Tory aristocrats. The Queen wasn’t so fond of Margaret Thatcher and they had a proper falling out after a leak from the palace to the papers in 1986. Or if you prefer, The Crown, series four, episode eight. Or last year’s Channel 5 documentary, featuring several of the same talking heads, also titled The Queen and Her Prime Ministers.
The Crown,
commentators have noted, is part conjecture, whereas this is documentary – but then anything to do with the Queen’s weekly meetings with her prime ministers is largely guesswork because their audiences are private and no one else is in attendance. One of the “revealing” documents cited in this film was the diaries of Tommy Lascelles, the Queen’s Private Secretary (out now in paperback for anyone who wants to look for £11.99). “I could not hear what they said,” says Lascelles of one audience between the Queen and Churchill. “But they laughed.”
With those kinds of bombshells dropping left, right and centre, it’s a marvel the film had time to jimmy in a Key Stage 2 History of Modern Britain, yet somehow there was scope for further revelations including that Britain changed in the 1960s, Margaret Thatcher was the only woman in a cabinet of men and the Palace bungled their response to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.
The first two Royals Declassified documentaries went out in late March and early April, just before the Duke of Edinburgh died. It doesn’t take a secret communiqué to work out why this film was parked back then and now has been quietly shovelled out on a Saturday night in August when most of the country is away.
Strike a final pose. The climactic season of this love letter to New York’s underground “ball” scene, and its pioneering queer, trans and racially diverse community, is the most melodramatic yet. Featuring screeching tonal shifts, it juxtaposes grim reality – the peak of the Aids epidemic – with a glittering fantasy of found families and fabulous fashion. Inspirational? Yes. Subtle? Good god no.
Season three of (BBC Two), now entirely available on iplayer, begins in 1994, with Blanca and her brood gathering round the TV to watch OJ fleeing in his white Bronco. But, while executive producer Ryan Murphy dedicated a whole series to the Simpson case in American Crime Story, here it’s an excuse to hammer home the message of togetherness, celebrating what Blanca – and by extension this groundbreaking series – has built.
The ever-supportive Blanca gets her own love interest and strong professional purpose this season, which gives the ever-watchable Mj Rodriguez more to do than trot out motivational speeches. There are fewer ball scenes, both for narrative reasons and logistical (pandemic filming challenges), but the soundtrack is still packed with bangers.
The darkest plotline concerns the Hiv-positive Pray Tell: attending the funerals of so many friends has plunged him into alcoholism. It allows the electrifying Billy Porter to show his full dramatic range – particularly in the outstanding fourth episode where he heads home.
Yet Pose is a sudsy soap opera at heart. Unlike It’s a Sin, it’s not really built for a nuanced portrait of the Aids crisis. Elektra and Pray Tell have fled their blood relatives, and convention, yet the show itself feels increasingly conservative. It’s a cosy family drama, offering up neat lessons, unfailing optimism and traditional signifiers of success, such as expensive apartments and glossy social lives.
That sentimental and aspirational sheen might well offer radical hope to those who have been excluded from society, and from our stories. But it turns a drama into a victory parade.
The Queen and Her Prime Ministers ★ ★★★