A bit of a curate's egg, this one
Some wonderful acting from an especially well selected cast, who had all obviously studied their respective characters carefully, as was evidenced by some particularly effective body language and posture, and, in some cases even looked rather uncannily like their personas-particularly worthy of mention were the wonderful late Tim Pigott-Smith (who will be sadly missed), in the eponymous lead, and, in a much lesser role, Margot Leicester as Camilla. I felt Charlotte Riley (Kate) was rather over-egging the pudding at times, presumably to illustrate her overarching ambition, but Richard Goulding, as Harry, was simply wonderful, and eerily familiar
I shall gloss over the plot, as it's difficult to criticize without giving too much away, but, although somewhat 'dumbed-down', as is today's fashion, it was probably the most cerebrally challenging new drama I've seen in quite some time-lots of food for thought, and 'what if's?'
Well filmed, although this wasn't really too difficult, as most of the shots were interior, and beautifully dressed, this was a good return to form for the beleaguered BBC, which begs the question-why bury it in the midweek schedule, on BBC2?..
I do have some criticisms, however-my perennial complaint about diction and vocabulary (with the exception of TP-S), a few foolish throw-away lines (the Duchess of Cornwall telling the Duchess of Cambridge that 'we don't have a constitution'-well, actually, we do, it's just not a written constitution), and some procedural errors: although Charles would be referred to 'His Majesty' by courtesy immediately upon the death of his mother, his son would need to be invested as the Prince of Wales, and would not, therefore, refer to himself as such until then, nor would he be addressed as 'His Royal Highness' until after his father had been crowned (you can see why they were simply credited as 'Charles' and 'William')-I thought the inclusion of a ghost was juvenile and preposterous-a silly device to allow the author (Mike Bartlett) to hammer home the characters' thoughts- but these are mere semantics
On the whole, it was a well thought-out and well written piece-perhaps a little clumsy and obvious in places, but most enjoyable nonetheless
If you missed it, I should recommend catching-up as soon as possible-don't be put off by the fact that it's written in blank verse-Shakespeare it ain't, believe me, and the rather peculiar mix of flowery prose and C21 slang is initially rather grating on the ear, but as the play progresses, you soon learn to ignore it. Enjoy it as it is, if only as this was T P-S's last performance
Oh, and I thought Tamara Lawrance was simply delicious
