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Queen Victoria on the Small Screen
Aug. 29th, 2019 09:31 amLast weekend I binged the first season and a bit of the second season of ITV's Victoria about the life of the young monarch when she first took the throne. I liked it, but not enough to watch any further, and also I liked the BBC's 2001 miniseries Victoria & Albert better. The older BBC version does a much better job of feeling like it's actually set in the 19th Century with actual 19th Century people, whereas the ITV version sort of feels like modern people in funny costumes.
In particular, Jenna Coleman's Victoria from the current ITV series reads to me like a generic headstrong modern young woman squeezed into weird 19th Century clothing and culture, whereas Victoria Hamilton's Victoria (yes, they had a woman named Victoria playing Queen Victoria) felt like she really was the same person from history, with all her flaws and virtues, inhabiting the culture and world that had shaped her. This is not saying that Jenna didn't do a good job, but rather that I'm pretty sure the ITV version had decided that people would identify more with Victoria if she was more modern in outlook and actions, and consciously went that direction, and they may well have been right that people connected better with their version than if they'd tried something more historically accurate.
The other thing that I really preferred about Victoria & Albert is that they did a much better job with Albert (unsurprisingly, since the earlier miniseries was half about him). Like Hamilton's Victoria, Jonathan Firth's Albert was very definitely that specific historical person, and not a more generic (and easier for modern audiences to relate to) character. He was just as priggish as the real-life Albert was, but humanized so that even if you didn't agree with him, you understood and sympathized with why he thought the way he did. The ITV version was just sort of awkward and judgy. Worse, the ITV version made several comments during the courtship that read as warning flags to me, although I can't remember specifically what they were, but they were the sort of stuff that really pinged me as "oh, no, this is not a man you want to tie your life to in a world without easy divorce." In the BBC version, there was chemistry and honest difference of opinion and all sorts of reasons why Victoria didn't want to marry him at first that weren't because he was a bad match for her; in the ITV version, every time she blew cold to him it was because of something that could be an indicator of a really big problem down the line, where I was telling the TV "no, girl, trust your instincts and kick him to the curb." (Also, I don't think the production really ... got that these were problematic things he was saying? Just assuming that controlling and belittling and possessive stuff is normal and right.)
There were a lot of other differences between the two productions, of course--Lord Melbourne being the biggie--but the rest were mostly things where I liked both versions. In the BBC version, Lord Melbourne is played as a staid middle-aged kindly man with whom Victoria has a deep friendship with no romantic or sexual elements. In the ITV version, they really played up the chemistry and doomed romance bit. I like the BBC version because how often do we get a cross-generational m&f friendship that is portrayed as close and warm and good without any sex getting in the way, but on the other hand I thought the ITV version did the UST very well.
Fandom has disappointed me, though; I looked at the fanfic on AO3, filtered out all the pairings with names I didn't recognize (whom I assume come from characters introduced after I stopped watching) and unsurprisingly the vast majority of what was left was Victoria/Lord M UST/slow burn romances. Lot of nice ones, but all very similar. Nothing that really pushed the angst up to 11, and few fluffy happy things with no angst at all, just sort of middle-of-the-road. No femdom, or threesomes with both Albert and Lord M, or AUs in which Victoria only became the heir much later after she was out at court, no explorations of her childhood or fics diving into political battles with her uncles and Sir John. And I know I shouldn't criticize where I'm not contributing (as I have too many other things on my plate to write for a show that I didn't find interesting enough to watch all of), but I had been hoping for a little more variety. Ah, well, such is life.
In particular, Jenna Coleman's Victoria from the current ITV series reads to me like a generic headstrong modern young woman squeezed into weird 19th Century clothing and culture, whereas Victoria Hamilton's Victoria (yes, they had a woman named Victoria playing Queen Victoria) felt like she really was the same person from history, with all her flaws and virtues, inhabiting the culture and world that had shaped her. This is not saying that Jenna didn't do a good job, but rather that I'm pretty sure the ITV version had decided that people would identify more with Victoria if she was more modern in outlook and actions, and consciously went that direction, and they may well have been right that people connected better with their version than if they'd tried something more historically accurate.
The other thing that I really preferred about Victoria & Albert is that they did a much better job with Albert (unsurprisingly, since the earlier miniseries was half about him). Like Hamilton's Victoria, Jonathan Firth's Albert was very definitely that specific historical person, and not a more generic (and easier for modern audiences to relate to) character. He was just as priggish as the real-life Albert was, but humanized so that even if you didn't agree with him, you understood and sympathized with why he thought the way he did. The ITV version was just sort of awkward and judgy. Worse, the ITV version made several comments during the courtship that read as warning flags to me, although I can't remember specifically what they were, but they were the sort of stuff that really pinged me as "oh, no, this is not a man you want to tie your life to in a world without easy divorce." In the BBC version, there was chemistry and honest difference of opinion and all sorts of reasons why Victoria didn't want to marry him at first that weren't because he was a bad match for her; in the ITV version, every time she blew cold to him it was because of something that could be an indicator of a really big problem down the line, where I was telling the TV "no, girl, trust your instincts and kick him to the curb." (Also, I don't think the production really ... got that these were problematic things he was saying? Just assuming that controlling and belittling and possessive stuff is normal and right.)
There were a lot of other differences between the two productions, of course--Lord Melbourne being the biggie--but the rest were mostly things where I liked both versions. In the BBC version, Lord Melbourne is played as a staid middle-aged kindly man with whom Victoria has a deep friendship with no romantic or sexual elements. In the ITV version, they really played up the chemistry and doomed romance bit. I like the BBC version because how often do we get a cross-generational m&f friendship that is portrayed as close and warm and good without any sex getting in the way, but on the other hand I thought the ITV version did the UST very well.
Fandom has disappointed me, though; I looked at the fanfic on AO3, filtered out all the pairings with names I didn't recognize (whom I assume come from characters introduced after I stopped watching) and unsurprisingly the vast majority of what was left was Victoria/Lord M UST/slow burn romances. Lot of nice ones, but all very similar. Nothing that really pushed the angst up to 11, and few fluffy happy things with no angst at all, just sort of middle-of-the-road. No femdom, or threesomes with both Albert and Lord M, or AUs in which Victoria only became the heir much later after she was out at court, no explorations of her childhood or fics diving into political battles with her uncles and Sir John. And I know I shouldn't criticize where I'm not contributing (as I have too many other things on my plate to write for a show that I didn't find interesting enough to watch all of), but I had been hoping for a little more variety. Ah, well, such is life.
