All Blog writings from February 2007 added duing 2009 as part of the Artman 101 project.
Friday 14 October 2016
A number of significant
Television series programmes have or are coming to an end over the first part
of October 2016 and it is difficult to decide on an order of importance so I
will begin with Victoria, an ITV production of eight episodes aimed at the
Downton Abbey Sunday night audience over the past eight weeks and where a
second series and a Christmas special have been commissioned. The aim of the
production was to compete with the BBC’s success of Poldark and its central
male character, selecting Jenna Coleman who made her name in over150 episodes
of the soap Emmerdale and since 2012 was the companion of Dr Who Matt Smith,
with whom she worked previously and where it is said she can talk faster than
him. The series was therefore set up as
mass entertainment and not a documentary on our knowledge of the Empress of
India, head of the Empire, long reigning, great grandmother with many children,
refusing to recognise her public role following the death of her husband and
overseeing as head of state the most dramatic and significant period in the
economic and social history of Britain.
Because of this I commenced to
study social and economic as well as political history during the first year at
Ruskin College 19611962 having previously obtained my only Advanced Level
General certificate of education in the British Constitution and one of the
ordinary level certificates in History and although I changed to public and
social administration and child social work I have maintained an interest in
the period over subsequent decades building up a mini library of non fiction.
The overview of the period
centering on the role of Government are Edward Woodward’s Age of Reform 1815 to
1870 and The Ensor England 1870-1914 in the Oxford History series, together with Court’s Economic History, Arthur Bryant’s
English Saga, and with a focus on Queen Victoria, Kings and Queens England
edited by Antonia Fraser together with her editing of the Dorothy Marshalls Victoria which includes
contemporary visual records and the authoritative biography by Elizabeth
Longford who was gained access to the Royal records and a wide range of other
documentation including the diaries. The relationship between Queen Victoria
and Lord Melbourne, a period in which she was referred to as Mrs Melbourne
because of the amount of time spent with him, is covered in David Cecil’s biography
called Melbourne. G.M Young’s Portrait of an Age together with the Victoria Age
1815-1914 by R J Evans provides also broad sweeps of the period. Cole and
Postgate’s, The Common People and Cole’s History of the British working class
movement cover the traumatic transition from an agricultural to industrial
economy. Social concerns are covered in the biography of Shaftesbury by
Georgina Battiscombe with the underclass covered in Peter Quennell’s London
Underworld and Kellow Chesney’s The Victorian Underworld, together with Dickens
of London by Wolf Mankowitz and contrasting with Young’s Victorian Essays and
Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians. The last word on the era of the British
Empire is covered by Colin Cross in The Fall of the British Empire.
With this knowledge immediate available
together with films and TV series about the era going back over
several decades I commenced to view the new television series with some
apprehension asking the question how will it measure up as dramatic and
information entertainment as well as historical accuracy? The most recent films
have been Emily Blunt’s Young Victoria and Judy Dench as the widow Queen,
provocatively titled, Mrs Brown but I can go back to the Anna Neagle films made
in 1937 and 1938 Victoria the Great and Sixty Glorious Years, the BBC TV series
Happy and Glorious 1952, the 1964 Granada TV series Victoria Regina and their
I997 series Victoria and Albert. Give my recent writing on the Kinks they
created a song in 1969 called Victoria.
The mistake I believe ITV has
made is to attempt a ratings and attention competition with the BBC over
Poldark and the need to attract the Down Abbey and Upstairs and Downstairs
audience and the younger generation to stay watching after the X Factor by some
spicing up and creating events about without there is no historical basis or
twisting past events to meet fashionable contemporary attitudes. The audience
has fallen from eight and a half to just under seven and a half million before
the last series one episode this past Sunday 9th October 2016. The
choice of the former Dr Who assistant as the Queen and the approach of the
production led to a massive outburst of spleen in the Spectator by James
Delingpole who called the work silly, facile and irresponsible and went on as a
sub head to say “I blame the feminisation of culture.” His outburst provoked a
massive response of outrage. The Guardian was more appreciative but also opened
by suggesting that ITV “didn’t need to embellish” the life of the Queen,
claiming it was wild enough already. Matthew Dennison went onto suggest that
its silliness was due to exaggeration that grossly distorting of facts arguing
that a good fist was made of the relationship between the young Queen and Lord
Melbourne. She did loathe her mother’s “adviser” and thought her mother weak
and over protective. She resisted the attempts at forced marriage and came to
adore him. There was open hostility to Albert because he was German and
resistance to his being given a formal role and by Victoria to his
participation in helping out in her official role. She was the subject of what
appeared at the time to be an assassination attempt but the idea that Albert
took an immediate interest in the plight of the working classes or the Queen
expressed views in support of the Chartist movement appear to have no
foundation. It would be surprising if any young mother did not have great fears
about her first child birth and the loss of some children was commonplace as
well as breeding many children in part to compensate for their loss, but mainly
because begetting children was regarded as a male right and confirmation of his
masculinity and respective roles of men and women in their place. In this respect
the notion of any woman, including a reigning head of state having opinions or
taking decisions unguided by men was unthinkable. I also suspect that there is
no evidence for the stories concerning the Royal Household.
My response after watching the first episode live has
been to record and watch when I can later sometimes fast forwarding sequences
lacking any interest. I have never watched Poldark. I looked forward to
watching Downton Abbey which had characters of substance which I was able to
believe in and where a commitment to portraying the period was scrupulously
researched and implemented throughout. I came to care about most of the
characters but this was lacking throughout the first series of Victoria. It
will be interesting to see the width of the time period and the international and nation event upon which the
second series is to be based.
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