bigjohn

It’s that time of year again when there is ‘bugger all’ to watch on TV ! … Apart from the odd watchable movie, it’s all sport, ‘reality crap’ and repeats of programmes repeated ‘Gawd’ knows how many times before ?

Bearing this in mind, I decided to watch the start of the second series of ‘Victoria’, although as an aficionado of the Victorian era, I was not too impressed with the first series which depicted the first few years of the reign of Queen Victoria, from her accession to the throne as a teenager, to her friendship and infatuation with Lord Melbourne, her marriage to Prince Albert and the birth of their first child.

Now, if you were asked to name a most interesting and eventful period in British History, you would be hard pressed to find one more exciting than the period of Queen Victoria’s reign, so why not just stick to history and forget all the ‘upstairs, downstairs’ rubbish such as the imagined lives of the palace servants and introducing historically inaccurate characters such as the miserable old walking stick waving Duchess of Buccleuch, the bossy Mistress of the Robes, who in fact, was eight years younger than Victoria when she joined the royal household. The subject of one scene which involved both Victoria and Albert concerned the vitally important matter of who was responsible for cleaning the palace windows !

Unfortunately, at this time most of the interesting real life characters have departed from the series. Lord ‘M’ has ‘popped his clogs’ and the Coburg family members have schlepped back to the old schloss. Even ‘Dash’ the poor bloody dog has ‘snuffed it’ ! .. and where is the Duke of Wellington when you need him ?

To be fair, the massacre of 4,500 British troops and 12,000 civilians during the retreat from Kabul did get a mention, but only so that the young (?) lone survivor could ‘make a pass at her’. I can’t wait for the start of …

… The Crimean War !