Alexandra Shulman’s Notebook
The biggest victim in a TV biopic? The truth
SERIES five of The Crown is landing soon and there is already a great deal of chatter about the effects on the Royal Family in the wake of the Queen’s death. Just as the country is, broadly speaking, supportive of our new King and his Queen Consort, along comes this bazooka of a storyline: the lead-up to Diana’s death.
Charles, it is said, is not treated any more sympathetically in this new series than in the last. There is more hand-wringing and callous infidelity in this portrayal of the disintegration of his relationship with the late Princess.
The Crown’s producers and Peter Morgan, the writer, are keen to emphasise that this is their interpretation of events rather than factually exact, and deny they are intending to undermine anyone.
In the words of the real Queen in the aftermath of Meghan’s Oprah interview bombshells, ‘recollections may vary’. The truth, it seems, is anyone’s to play with.
Morgan’s brilliant jigsaw puzzle of events and their consequences is an artistic rather than purely factual endeavour, albeit heavily researched. But it’s hard for most of us to disentangle fact from an imagined narrative. When we watch these television series or movies about real-life figures, with their embellishments, suppositions and supporting fictional characters, it deeply stains our perception of what we consider reality, even if we don’t wish them to.
Blonde, the new film about Marilyn Monroe showing on Netflix, is a classic example of the genre, mining every distasteful and grim detail of her life with its portrayal of a woman who existed, according to the film-maker, only as a victim. From her abusive childhood onwards, she is shown as a woman with no agency of her own, drifting breathlessly from one terrible scenario to another. With its hallucinogenic touches and flashbacks, it reminded me of last year’s Spencer, with Kristen Stewart playing a tragic, borderline crazy, selfabusive Princess Diana during her lonely Christmas at Sandringham.
There’s a common theme here. Biopics have to have a troubled life at their core. There’s not much traction in a story where everyone is getting along perfectly well and having a nice time. Drugs, sexual abuse, mental health issues and family trauma are the bread and butter of the biopic-maker.
This England, the six-part Sky drama featuring Boris, Carrie and the country during the pandemic, is about a dysfunctional institution, our Government, rather than a family.
Was Dominic Cummings constantly threatening to fire classrooms of Spads? Did Carrie always carry Dilyn around like a replacement handbag?
I’m rather enjoying it, but as with all these fictional dramas, any artistic merit they have is drowned by the obsessive desire to work out how much and what
is really true.
Queens of the comeback ball
JERRY HALL appeared at last week’s YSL show in Paris in the company of her daughter Georgia May. All twinkling eyes, red lipstick and tousled locks, she was clearly using the opportunity to show the world that her recent divorce from Rupes had not troubled her.
I remember Wendi Deng doing exactly the same thing a few months after her own marriage to the magnate hit the rocks, appearing front row and at parties under the guidance of Anna Wintour.
Forget the clothes: Paris Fashion Week is the new divorcee’s comeback ball. Perhaps MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos’s ex, who has just ended her marriage to her children’s science teacher, will be heading there for Dior next season.
A novel solution to help Liz keep calm
HUFFING and puffing around the park on my usual run, an image of Liz Truss flashed into my mind. Was her run similar to mine?
She’s got the gardens of Lambeth Palace to jog around, so I doubt she shares the same humiliation of fellow joggers overtaking her – and, mortifyingly, some folk who are simply walking. What, I wonder, does she listen to, or does she use the time cooking up the next questionable scheme for the economy?
For the wellbeing of the country, I recommend her to do as I do and listen to Anthony Trollope.
Listening to The Way We Live Now – entertaining and educative on the shortcomings of society and politics – is unlikely to leave you so pumped up that you embark on some new, ‘controversial and difficult’ plan.
For drama, we don’t need the Americans
I LOVE the comparisons being made between Meghan Markle and Nicola Peltz (Brooklyn Beckham’s heiress wife) as overbearing American women driving a rift between their husbands and their families. As if we need someone from the USA to cause problems in a British family… most of us are capable of achieving that all by ourselves.
Fuel rates freeze can save our cosy library
I AM an occasional volunteer at the Kensal Rise community library, an old institution rescued from closure by determined supporters. What a resource the place is. Computers, printers, a jolly good collection of adult and children’s books too, not to mention free heat and light. I hope we are going to be one of the beneficiaries of the Government’s new freeze on business fuel rates, because otherwise it’s hard to imagine how this lovely freeto-access institution will survive.
Why the quiet rural life just isn’t for me
IT’S always at this time of year, when the countryside looks so beautiful, that I think we should move there. How much simpler life would be. How much more at ease one would feel walking into such rural splendour. How much quieter the mind would be without the buzz of the city. And then I remember that the problem is that I would be bringing myself into this pastoral paradise, and that alone would be enough to shatter the peace.
Those posh voices keep you busy, Amol
RATHER than complaining about the BBC being stuffed with presenters with posh voices, Amol Rajan should be thrilled. If that weren’t the case, he probably wouldn’t be currently handed every gig going, with his South-London-on-speed delivery far more sought-after nowadays than the Received Pronunciation he so hates.