Victoria

[Chickenpie9]

Is anyone else looking forward to the return of Victoria on Sunday ? I will miss Lord Melbourne as I haven't read Rufus Sewell is returning but I can hope

This is the least gripping period drama in years. The below stairs stuff is embarrassingly clunky and the upstairs stuff lacks real drama. The cast are pretty but it's not enough.

I didn't really get the below stairs stuff in the first series either. It lacked something. I didn't care about the characters and didn't see the point of their stories. But then again I couldnt really xare less about the repeated Bates storyline or the boring below storylines in Downton either, so maybe I only watch period dramas for the pretty dresses!

Can someone tell me What happened to the staff member please?

Still love Lord M

soon....Lord M.

were they alluding that he was dying? with the leeches on him?

what was with the urchin story?

Im staying with the series, but its a bit boring atm. i think the writer is fictionalising things too much-Im trying to get the real story about V & A, and its all for dramatic purposes and stretching it out.

wonder what will happen witrh Ernest.

DId they have black actors in victorian times? the guy playing Othello.

In real life Lord M's wife was Lady Caroline Lamb who scandalised society with her affair with Lord Byron. Ada Lovelace was Byron's only legitimate child and her mother was determined she would not be a poet like Bryon so made sure she was tutored in the sciences. Bryon died when Ada was 8.
Lord M would have plenty of reason to keep his distance from Ada Lovelace.

Plenty of black people in Victorian Britain so would be normal to have 'negro' play Othello - though he was not African but a Moor.

I think the urchin story was meant to be a humorous interlude, but it was just poorly written and not funny at all.

MrsBotox that sounds like a far more interesting story

There's not really anything happening, is there?

Great to have Rufus Sewell back!

Lord M has had a stroke, hasn't he?

The urchin story is based on real life . I recently got a Victoria biography by Julia Baird and just read the part about the urchin the other night . In real life he was called the boy jones and he hung out in Buckingham Palace secretly for a few days three different times . His motivation seemed to be purely nosiness .
I do ageee this series seems slightly slow but it is lovely to watch . The lives of Victorias children and grandchildren would make a much more dramatic series I think !

Marking my place, will catch up in he morning

Euphemia you said that comment was from the Mexican war but that was after, I replied to you unthread about the ship.

Lord M doesn't die till seven years later and according to AN Wilson Victoria wasn't too fussed... But I get a feeling that trailer with her crying might have been about that, I wonder if they're planning to cram years into one episode.

I have a moral dilemma with Victoria now....I have a feeling if a man in that time had been pissed off about children I'd tell him to keep it in his pants!

I was thinking that Diana Rigg could have played an older Victoria but I'm not sure how far the novel goes.

It's so depressing to watch her turn to Albert for everything already! But probably accurate. Sigh. Nice to have Ada Lovelace included though.

Qui "Im trying to get the real story about V & A, and its all for dramatic purposes and stretching it out"

Why try to get it from a drama?

Slim they showed a docu drama about Elizabeth 1 some weeks back. thats why i asked.

I know Victoria is sunday night 'entertainment and stuff, just if something is based on a true story, shouldnt they have mostly truth in it?

I know its not touted as a docu drama but still....a bit confusing if you want to learn fact from fiction.

The actor playing Othello was Ira Aldridge, the first black actor to play Othello

Qui, I once heard Phillipa Gregory vigorously defending herself about this and I was thinking, why is anyone attacking her - her books are in the fiction section...?!

I think for any historians watching, it's awful when they include something that's just an error but it's pretty clear it's a story based on Queen Victoria - I find it odd that someone actually looking for the history doesn't look at history instead.

They keep messing around with what really happened as far as I have read Lord Melbourne was still PM when their first baby was born ?

Yes I'm reading the biography very slowly
And he is PM when she has her first child.

That is the kind of thing I don't expect a story to fiddle with, set dates.

So they might well kill off Lord M in the next episode without skipping a few years.

There's a Christmas special as well....

Don't want to post spoilers but has anyone watched episode 3 tonight

I did English social history for my A levels aeons ago and can remember being quite engrossed in the Corn Laws and the Chartist movement and all that, but we didnt look at Victoria's role in all of it. I'd quite like to read up the background to that, and ho much truth there is in the episode. I didnt get the impression the real Victoria had much of a social conscience.

I used to live in a Chartist cottage!!!! So very interesting to see the movement mentioned in this drama as I'd never heard of it before buying cottage despite living in the area all of my life.

chicken yes. all ill say for now is .

mind you, why doesnt anyone watch when itsa actually on? always pussyfooting round catchups.

whats going to happen with the gay story then? it was a crime back then. hope the writers not going to go all 21st century , shes moving things around too much.

isn't the MN convention that it's okay to talk about it after it aired in the UK? People shouldn't come on the thread if they are not ready?

Whilst I think there was some beautiful writing and acting in last night's episode, I am finding the mucking around with history way beyond acceptable.

then it's hard to know how I would interpret the show or characters without a bit of background e.g. is it obvious she's only reigning in excess now because of fear, French Revolution etc?

but having a look on Twitter showed only a couple of people questioning history so I suppose a lot of people will walk away with misconceptions.

Hilary Mantel mentions this in her Reith lectures - what people take away from your stories if they know background or not.

Rufus Sewell and Jenna Coleman did some great acting though and I particularly liked what Melbourne said - no idea if he said it in real life - about if you left behind a building or a work of art that people would admire for years and years.

another point - I know they did post-production as they went along, but I wonder how much rushing did happen in this show, because they only finished filming the week before it aired. I thought they spent a lot of time stretching things out. How far does Goodwin's novel go, does anyone know? Is it a case of just writing more because it did better than they thought, and maybe she wrote this in a hurry so just chucked in storylines to fill things out?

Or maybe it's just me that doesn't care about Ernst...? I think Skerrick and her friend will have to part company but that was coming anyway.

will they skip a few years so we can get to 1848 and more Chartism, I really hope so.