royalty
Adam Sweeting
The death of Princess Diana 20 years ago had an extraordinary emotional effect on millions of people who had never met her, so what on earth must it have felt like for her two young sons? Prince Harry, aged 12 when his mother died, reflected on that in this much-anticipated programme. He recalled how, as he watched the mourning crowds outside Kensington Palace, he’d wondered: “How are these people showing more emotion than I am feeling?”Harry and his older brother William decided that the 20th anniversary of that shocking event would be the moment for them do once-and-for-all interviews about Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Actor Oliver Chris, who plays William in Mike Bartlett’s ingeniously-crafted play about the monarchy, was doing some pre-transmission fire-fighting by going round telling interviewers he couldn’t see what anybody (eg the Daily Mail) could find to get upset about. Why would they? King Charles III only depicts the ghost of Diana speaking with forked tongue, a political and constitutional crisis, and an internal putsch within the Royal Family. There’s even a jibe about Harry’s paternity. And all this after having buried the Queen.To be sure, the piece has already enjoyed a lavishly-acclaimed run Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It has been a long, long time since Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais wrote a new sitcom; in their heyday they created The Likely Lads and its sequel, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, all of which have become classics of the genre. The duo went to live in Los Angeles some decades ago to work in both film and TV, but now return with a new sitcom, set in the fictional but contemporary court of King Henry IX.Henry IX follows in the writers' familiar territory of having their characters confined by circumstance. Likely Lads Bob and Terry were hemmed in by Read more ...
David Nice
No-one has ever matched costume drama to psychological depth quite like Luchino Visconti. Much of it has to do with what Henry James termed a "divided consciousness": as a nobleman who became a communist in World War Two and was relatively open about his homosexuality, Visconti was able to depict the warped opulence surrounding Ludwig II of Bavaria with a meticulous eye for detail and composition, while analysing the causes of his dramatic decline as a despised outsider (and no, Ludwig was not mad; Visconti was among the first to say so).There's little of the hysteria and excessive Read more ...
Jasper Rees
On screen, two hoodlums in macs and homburgs debate the best way to waste a victim. One of them, played by Peter Sellers, proffers a revolver. The other, who from under his hat has something of Herbert Lom about his profile, pulls on a cigarette and shakes his head. How about the acid in the bath routine? Another shake of the head. Case him in cement and drop him in the river? No. Sellers’ gangster is bemused. No gun, no acid, no cement: so how’s he going to do it? At this point the Lom lookalike removes his hat and reveals himself as the husband of the sister of the Queen. “Mind your own Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Born in Rome and taught by her artist father, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1652) led a colourfully energetic life. As an adolescent she was raped by her father’s assistant – an episode which unusually, then as now, actually came to public trial – but she nevertheless became a confident, resolute woman, and a successful artist. She was vitally ambitious, portraying herself as La Pittura in her Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, c.1638-9, an image at the heart of this exhibition.Here Artemisia is almost hurling herself at her canvas, brush in one hand, palette in the other. Wearing Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Peter Morgan can't get enough of Her Majesty. Ten years ago he wrote The Queen (with Helen Mirren starring), in 2013 he brought us the stage play The Audience (Dame Helen, again), and now he's written all 10 episodes of this first series of Netflix's royal juggernaut, The Crown.The long-term strategy is for The Crown to tell the story of the Queen from her wedding in 1947 to the present day, which producers Left Bank Pictures reckon will take six seasons. Stepping into the royal shoes is Claire Foy, whom we first meet as she prepares for her wedding to Philip Mountbatten (Matt Smith, pictured Read more ...
Jasper Rees
One down, eight childbirths to go. The young Queen Victoria was delivered of her first child at the climax of this moreish opening series, and the bells of Windsor tolled for joy. ITV, debutant scriptwriter Daisy Goodwin and biographical consultant AN Wilson will be feeling parental pride that between them they have given birth to a healthy 10-pound whopper that looks very much like the natural heir to Downton.Victoria took its cue from dynastic romance to tell the story of a proto-feminist teen thrust into the limelight like a 19th-century pop starlet forced to grow up on the job. The story Read more ...
Mark Sanderson
So much has happened since the first of June when Versailles flounced on to our screens with its flowing locks and flashing cocks. The British people have voted to widen the Channel, the Conservatives have a new leader, Labour doesn’t have one and Christopher Biggins has been expelled from the Big Brother house. As Louis XIV might have said: plus ça change…The title song (Now and Forever by M83) became increasingly haunting as the weeks and wigs (often with heads still attached) rolled by. The series lost interest in sex as more and more bricks were laid, the palace took shape and glory shone Read more ...
Mark Sanderson
In the middle of the last century the worst thing that could be said about a working-class housewife was that she had “run off with a black man”. Well, the Queen of France, no better than she ought to be, has had it off with a black man (in fact her pet dwarf). Last week’s opening episode of Versailles ended with Louis XIV (George Blagden) setting eyes on the resulting black baby for the first time.The second episode immediately picks up the baby and runs with it – all the way to a blind wet nurse from whose breast the sinister henchman Marchal (Tygh Runyan) plucks it before attempting Read more ...
Veronica Lee
There’s little chance, I would guess, that the Windsors were gathered on the sofa to watch The Windsors last night. The show, thankfully, is not another attempt to oil up the collective fundament of the British royal family (and goodness knows television producers were doing enough of that in programmes about the Queen’s 90th birthday recently), more an attempt to destroy it by spoof.Royalists needn’t worry about the imminent downfall of their favourites, though; as funny as much of The Windsors is, there’s nothing much to challenge the crown in George Jeffrie and Bert Tyler-Moore’s scripts. Read more ...
David Nice
Banished from the Barbican are the hollow kings of the mediocre RSC Henrys IV and V. In their place comes a whole new procession of living, breathing monarchs in a vision that's light years away from bad heritage Shakespeare. Doyen of Dutch-Belgian - and world - theatre Ivo van Hove has filleted Henry V, the three Henry VI plays and Richard III to create his own trilogy of Greek-tragedy leanness and power, focusing above all on the totally different characters of three men making crucial decisions in times of civil, internecine and international war. Shakespeare, whose language remains intact Read more ...