By ROSLYN SULCAS
CHURCH FENTON, England — A
heavily pregnant Queen Victoria lay in bed, looking disheveledly pretty and
decidedly grumpy. A deadpan Prince Albert read her a lame joke from a magazine
to cheer her up. “We are not amused,” she muttered.
“That’s funny,” a
production assistant said, looking at the television monitors showing the
actors Jenna Coleman and Tom Hughes as they ran through this scene in the large
studios here, in which bits of Buckingham Palace had been recreated.
“We are not amused” may be
a familiar phrase. But ITV’s “Victoria,” which debuts on “Masterpiece” on PBS
on Sunday, doesn’t show us the dumpy, doughty black-clad widow associated with
the expression. Instead, “Victoria” paints a picture of a pretty, willful,
inexperienced and isolated teenager who wakes up one day to find herself queen
of England, and who must find the inner strength to take on a male-dominated
world.
There are clear
similarities between this story and other costume dramas that are
bread-and-butter “Masterpiece” fare (as well as with “The Crown,” the Netflix
series that portrays the reign of the young Queen Elizabeth II). But Daisy
Goodwin, the British television producer and writer of historical fiction, who
created “Victoria,” said that there is at least one important difference.
“Although ‘Victoria’ has a
romantic sensibility, at its heart it is about a concept so modern that it
still frightens people: a young woman in power,” who had direction over her
life that one doesn’t expect in a period drama, Ms. Goodwin said.
Ms. Goodwin, who studied
history — with a focus on the Victorian — at Cambridge University, said that
her vision of the adolescent, impetuous Victoria came in part from being a
parent. “I have a 16-year-old daughter, and we had a row one day, and I
thought, what if we woke up and she was the boss of me?” Ms. Goodwin said.
Initially, she planned to
write a novel about Victoria. “I had read her diaries and had a sort of
epiphany about her friskiness as a young girl,” she said. “I began to work on
it, but I’m not really equipped to be a novelist alone. I soon thought, why has
no one done this as a TV series?”
The production company
Mammoth commissioned a script, and PBS committed to the production at an early
stage. Rebecca Eaton, the executive producer of “Masterpiece,” said that she
and her colleagues were looking for a show that could reach a nontraditional
audience of young women, as well as fill the large coronet-shaped hole left by
“Downton Abbey.” She said that “Victoria” distinguished itself with its
singular focus — both on and behind the camera. “This is an opportunity for an
arresting, truly memorable performance by an actress, as Glenda Jackson
delivered with ‘Elizabeth R,’ or Helen Mirren in ‘Prime Suspect,’” Ms. Eaton
said. “And Daisy Goodwin, not a roomful of writers, as the single creative
force at the heart of the story is an opportunity for a very personal, deeply
felt piece of work.”
Ms. Goodwin said she knew
she would begin the series (and her novel, which she wrote simultaneously) with
the day Victoria learned she was queen. (It was June 20, 1837.) “When she got
the power, she didn’t hang around,” Ms. Goodwin said. “She replaced the name
she was known by, Alexandrina, with Victoria, a name that didn’t exist in
England at the time. You have to think that this was self-determinism, victory
over her childhood.”
That childhood was an
unhappy and lonely one, dominated by her mother and Sir John Conroy, her
mother’s manipulative adviser. “Her resistance to that tells you a lot about
her; this absolute, obstinate nature of hers was vital in getting her through
her reign,” said Ms. Coleman, who played the companion to Doctor Who from 2012
to 2015.
Season 1’s eight episodes
follow Victoria through her first three years as queen; years dominated by her
infatuation with her prime minister, Lord Melbourne (Rufus Sewell), her growing
confidence as ruler, and her eventual passion for her first cousin, the German
Prince Albert (Mr. Hughes). In Britain, where the show aired in the fall,
ratings were high and reviews mainly positive, but the show was also criticized
for historical inaccuracy, notably its portrayal of Victoria’s obsession with
Lord Melbourne, and the general unlikeliness of Mr. Sewell’s smolderingly
handsome figure. “I’m sure I’ve heightened it, but there is no doubt that
Victoria was besotted with Melbourne,” Ms. Goodwin said. “He is on every page
of her diaries.”
In a telephone interview,
Mr. Sewell said that his research allayed any fears that Lord Melbourne had
been too “souped up” for modern-day audiences. “He was very attractive to women
all his life; he was a proper Regency rake, and he really liked women.” But Mr.
Sewell and Ms. Goodwin did decide to deviate from one part of the record: portraying
Lord Melbourne in his historically correct late 50s. “It seemed a waste to lose
my late 40s,” he said.
Eventually, Victoria falls
for and marries Mr. Hughes’s brooding, perfectly German-accented Albert, and
the series ends with the birth of their first child.
Ms. Goodwin, steeped in
Victorian fiction, uses many of those tropes in the series: a bit of Emma, a
bit of Mr. Knightley, a bit of Dickens. “But in those works, women are mostly
such passive agents,” she said. “Here you can subvert the normal marriage plot,
because it’s Victoria who has the power and must propose to Albert.”
The next season, Ms.
Goodwin said, will deviate from the usual period drama fare as well. “It will
be about the very modern dilemma of dealing with the job, children and a power
struggle with your husband,” she said.
She added: “It’s about a
woman who gets to call the shots in her life at a time when that was very
difficult for women, and that’s a powerful thing. At the same time, it’s quite
sprightly and funny and romantic, and I think that’s what is pretty much missing
in the TV landscape now.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/arts/television/a-woman-at-the-helm-bringing-victoria-to-life.html?_r=0
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